


Time Entangled

by Eternal Scribe (Shadowcat)



Category: Primeval
Genre: Community: au_bigbang, Crossing Timelines, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-03
Updated: 2011-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcat/pseuds/Eternal%20Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having worked for the Anomaly Research Center for a few years, Nick, Stephen, Tom, Abby, Connor and Claudia thought they had seen everything. But when an incursion turns out to be people instead of rampaging animals, that's not the only shock they get. Abby and Stephen are the first on the scene when Abby and Connor come through the anomaly. Abby and Connor are from a time line where some things have gone horrible wrong. Now, not only do they have to convince this time line's version of their friends what has happened, they need to find their way back to their own home and time line. Back in their world, Becker, Danny, Sarah and Jenny are working frantically to find a way to locate their friends and bring them home. Armed with two years of notes and several journals, they're doing their best to open an anomaly and get their loved ones back because they know something that the other time line doesn't. They're running out of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was Stephen and Abby who reached the sight of the anomaly first, and what happened next was hard for them to believe.

The two of them saw something coming through the anomaly, and raised their guns in readiness. When they saw the two people come through, they lowered their guns but stayed defensive.

"Connor?" Abby was the first one to get her voice as she stared at the two people in front of them.

For his part, Stephen was just staring at the woman who looked like Abby, but whose eyes seemed so different.

Connor and Abby stayed close together as they looked around them, before their eyes came back to rest on Stephen and Abby.

"Stephen?" The older Abby asked, her voice deeper than his current companion's had ever been. "Is that really you?"

"Yeah, I'm really me," he said, glancing at his own Abby to see what she was thinking about all of this. "Is that really you... and Connor? What the hell?"

A look passed between Connor and Abby. "I've got to, love," he said, brushing hair from her face. "He really does kind of deserve it and all."

Abby nodded in understanding. "Just remember to pivot and not use all of your strength, yeah?"

Before Stephen and his Abby could figure out what was going on, Connor stepped up to Stephen.

"Sorry, mate, but you've had this coming for three years or more."

Abby had time to blink before she heard the sound of fist hitting flesh and saw Stephen go sprawling to the ground.

"What the hell, Connor?" she demanded as she bent to check on Stephen who looked as surprised as she felt.

"Did _Connor_ just punch me in the face?"

Abby looked back to the other to, and saw that Connor was already standing with the other Abby, and they had linked hands. The other woman didn't say anything, but Connor shrugged.

"He had it coming," Connor said again.

Stephen got back to his feet, shaking his head slowly. He was confused about just what the hell was going on. The Connor he knew would never have tried to punch him, not to mention actually send him to the ground. He stepped forward, but stopped when he saw how the older version of Abby immediately tensed and placed herself slightly in front of Connor in a defensive position. He frowned, looking the two of them over carefully. He really didn't like what he was seeing.

The two people in front of him looked like Abby and Connor, but the changes in them were more than just a little shocking. The two of them looked older, harder. Abby's hair was much longer than he was used to seeing it; Connor had a beard, and a scar over one eye. They were both thinner than they probably should be and that showed in the planes of their faces. Neither one of them had yet to smile, and that was probably the most telling thing of all. He couldn’t remember seeing Abby or Connor without easy smiles to give to those around them. The way the two of them were standing, it looked to him like they were the only two they had relied on for a very long time.

He stepped back to _his_ Abby, and this was starting to give him a headache, and saw the other Abby relax her stance with Connor.

Something really bad had happened. Something bad had happened that had caused these two versions of his friends to look like they had gone through a war – and may not have come out the other side yet.

"Radio Cutter and Ryan," Stephen finally said quietly. "Let them know that we have a situation."

 

The anomaly crested brightly and then just as suddenly died.

There was nothing but silence for a long moment until an roar of emotion filled the building.

"NO!"

"Becker --"

"Damn it, we were so close! We saw them this time!"

"Becker --"

"If we had just moved faster!"

" _BECKER!_ "

Captain Becker rounded on the man next to him. "WHAT?!"

"We'll get them back," Danny Quinn said quietly. "Now that we've gotten this close, we won't let them out of our grasp that easily."

If it was anyone else, Becker might have hit him for getting his hopes to flicker to life again. "It's been so long, already," Becker finally said. "They're going to think we gave up on them."

Danny laughed quietly and shook his head. "If there is one thing that I know about Abby and Connor, mate, it's that you are the last person they would believe who would give up on them." He gestured with his head and the two men walked away from where the others were frantically trying to figure out how to open the anomaly again. "Look, we know that they're alive now. Before we had only hopes to get us through, but this time we saw them."

Becker sighed, holstering his sidearm. "It's been over two years, Danny. I don't like thinking of what they might have gone through and are still going through. If it wasn't for Helen --"

"She would have killed them already if she wanted them dead, Becker."

"She certainly seemed to be set on killing Abby that day."

"Probably because she knew that only threatening Abby would get us to back down... and get Connor to do what she wanted." Danny said calmly. "I don't think she would have really killed Abby, but I wasn't willing to take that risk. Were you?"

The look Becker gave him spoke volumes.

This time it was Danny who sighed, running a hand over his face. "I curse the day that I ever met that woman. I should have let Christine Johnson keep her."

"You thought she was a kidnap victim who needed help," Becker pointed out. "It wasn't in your nature to turn your back on her."

"Things change."

Yeah, a great many things had changed the day they lost Abby and Connor two years ago. Lester had hired a new team to go out on alerts in order to give the original team the ability to focus on getting their lost people back. Becker and Danny didn't like the leader of the new team too much. They were suspicious of him and how perfect he seemed. Sarah and Jenny both defended him -- and the new computer genius that was hired to take Connor's place. Danny just wished she would spend less time trying to flirt with Becker. All _that_ did was make Becker's usually even temper start to rise.

"Danny?"

Speak of the devil, Danny thought as he heard Jess' voice come over his earpiece. "Yeah, Jess?"

"Did Becker lose his communications device again? I can't get him to respond and the computer says he's with you."

Danny looked at Becker, who rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, it was lost on the other side of the anomaly when it opened up," he lied smoothly. "Becker had to make a choice between trying to hold onto it or his gun. He chose the gun."

Becker bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. He could just imagine the look on Jess' face at that bit of information.

"All right, then, I'll get him a new one."

"You're the best, Jess."

"Of course I am." She chirped. "Oh, Lester would like a word with you when your team gets back."

"We weren't planning on coming back just yet."

"Yes, you are," Jess said firmly. "You've been out at that sight for three days. Sarah and Jenny both say that the two of you need proper food and a good rest."

"Fine," he muttered, turning his device off.

"She's not the best," Becker grumbled when they got into the truck. "Connor is the best."

"Give her a break, Becker," Danny said, like he had many times before. "She doesn't know."

 

When Cutter and Ryan responded to Abby's call, the two men were shocked by the appearances of the doppelgangers of their friends. There was no recognition when they glanced at Ryan -- and that wasn't a good sign -- but the look of pain in their eyes when they looked at him didn't bode well.

When Ryan's men arrived with weapons at the ready, Connor looked at Cutter and his lips twitched slightly.

"We're dangerous creatures, are we?"

"It's normal procedure anytime something comes through an anomaly, Connor," Cutter said quietly. "You know that, Connor." He winced. "The other you... our you knows that."

"Oh, now we're _things_ ," Abby said bitterly from his side. "Hear that, Conn? Because we came through an anomaly, we're not even considered humans yet."

Stephen flinched, then looked at his Abby. He couldn't imagine her ever sounding that hurt and angered by them. For her part, Abby was more than a little shocked as she examined her doppelganger.

"It's better than being on a velociraptor's menu, I guess," Connor said, his own voice sounding betrayed as he grasped Abby's hand. "Much better than being held hostage by that crazy bitch."

That caused everyone to become more than a little concerned. What exactly had happened to this version of their friends? More importantly, _who_ had held them hostage and caused them such pain?

Before Cutter could ask any of the many questions going through his mind, another member of their team arrived. When he saw the familiar brown hair and careless smirk, Connor barely had time to sidestep into one of Ryan's men before Abby leaped at her.

Abby hit the woman with all of the force she could muster behind her swinging fist. At the same time, she used her leg to sweep the other woman's legs out from under her. Abby went down on top of the woman, hitting her again as she kneed her in the ribs as best as she could. The other woman only had time to cry out once as Abby attacked her.

What happened next might have been prevented if Ryan or Cutter had been closer. It might have been avoided all together if one of Ryan's men hadn't placed the barrel of his gun against Abby's head and told her to cease her attack.

"Not again," Connor whispered, causing Stephen's head to jerk up in alarm.

All Connor saw was the gun. The gun that was trained on Abby and that was threatening her. He wasn't going to let either one of them go through that again.

"No," Stephen said, stepping forward, but he could see by Connor's eyes that he wasn't going to be quick enough.

Connor exploded.

With a series of unexpected jabs and kicks, he got past the men who had surrounded him and Abby. As soon as he was free of them, he was on the man threatening Abby with a viciousness that surprised those that knew the younger version of him. All Connor was aware of was the man pointing the gun at Abby and he wasn't going to let go of him.

There was the sound of shouting and then a scream for them to stop. When the echoes faded, both Abby and Connor were crumpled on the ground. Ryan grabbed a gun from one of his men.

"I said to hold your fire! What the hell were you doing?"

"Trying to stop them, Captain," the soldier replied. "They were crazy. You saw them attack us."

"They were scared," Ryan barked. "Any idiot with half a brain could have seen that." He shoved him away and tossed his gun to Stephen. "It's a good thing that these were loaded with tranquilizers and not real bullets. You could have killed them." He pointed to two of the men. "You and you, see to Professor Lester. The rest of you head back to base. We'll take care of Abby and Connor."

After everyone else had cleared out, Ryan crouched next to the two unconscious people and watched as Cutter carefully examined them. There was small touch on his shoulder and he looked up into Abby's pale face. Her eyes were dark with worry.

"Are they going to be all right?"

Ryan nodded. He hated to think of how hard it must have been for her to see herself shot like that. "They will wake up, Abs," he said gently. "I promise you that. They're going to have one hell of a headache and probably be a bit sick, but they'll be okay."

Abby nodded and turned to Stephen, who pulled her close to him.

Ryan suddenly felt a lot older than he thought anyone should feel. He looked from Stephen to Cutter and then sighed. "You know we have no choice -- not when so many of my men saw what happened."

Cutter nodded, but he didn't look any happier than Stephen did about it. "If she hadn't attacked Helen like she was determined to kill her, maybe Connor wouldn't have seen fit to try to break the bones of your men."

"He was fine until that idiot put his gun on Abby," Stephen said angrily as he started searching their backpacks. "He probably would have been able to calm her down until that. You didn't see his eyes, Ryan. As soon as that gun touched her, it was like he was seeing another scene in his mind. He wasn't focused on anything but getting to her."

"We can't just lock them up in a cell!" Abby protested. "We can't do that to them! It's not right."

"Abby, until they wake up and Claudia can assure everyone that they're not a threat, there's nothing we can do." Cutter didn't sound like he was pleased with the idea.

"I promise you, my best men will be watching over them. As soon as they're cleared, we'll move them to the apartment or a hotel so we can talk to them."

Stephen muttered a curse as he held up the handmade wooden tools and the two small knives he had found. "Whatever happened to them, it's a good bet that it's been rough on them. The way they've acted since we found them, they haven't been around anyone but each other for a very long time." He turned one of the wooden machetes over in his hand. "It's good workmanship, which means they had awhile to perfect it."

None of the four of them liked the implication of that.

"What happened to them?" Abby asked softly. "And why was I trying to kill Helen?"


	2. Chapter 2

The group that gathered at Cutter's flat later that night were solemn, as well as confused.

Stephen was sitting on the sofa and he was holding Abby on his lap. He had found that after meeting that other version of her, he couldn't stand to let her out of his sight right now. It was probably a good thing that she was feeling the same way.

On the floor next to them, Connor had his back against the sofa. He was still having a hard time processing that there were now a different version of him and Abby unconscious at the ARC. Those two, they had barely looked like them and it scared him to think about what must have happened to change them so much.

Claudia was sitting in one of the chair and every few moments, she would shake her head. Even with everything they had seen with the anomalies, this was something that was beyond the experience they all had. She had barely believed Cutter when he called her to tell her what had happened. It was only _seeing_ those two people in the infirmary that she had been able to accept what he was telling her.

Ryan was leaning against the wall watching the room. He knew that there was no reason to be tense at Cutter's place -- god knew he'd spent enough time here with the others over the years -- but the events of today hadn't left him feeling at ease with anything. The looks he had seen in those older versions of his two youngest friends reminded him of things he had thought long buried. Those two kids were either going through or had just gone through a war. It worried him. He kept having to glance at Abby and Connor to make sure that they were still here with them and still the people he knew. He caught Stephen’s eyes once and then other man gave him a small smile in understanding.

Nick had been pacing, but the annoyed comment from Stephen about it earlier had stopped him. Now he was standing by the window looking at everyone gathered in the room. He had gone through his notes in his office and then those at home and he couldn't find any answers as to why a different version of Abby and Connor had come through an anomaly into their world. They had known him, though the look in their eyes when they saw him didn't sit well with him. They had known Stephen, but not Ryan. Abby had tried to kill Lester's wife.

He finally sighed, shaking his head. "I just can't make any sense of any of it. We've never had people -- people we know -- come through an anomaly before."

"That's because none of this makes sense," Stephen said. "I mean, Connor _hit_ me, for god's sake."

"No, that part kind of makes sense," Connor said sheepishly. Abby glared at him. "Well, it kind of does. He is all action hero guy and ..."

"Getting back to real point," Claudia said with a great deal of patience. "Where did they say they came from?"

"They didn't," Abby said. "Things started happening really quickly after I radioed to Cutter and Ryan." She shook her head. "You didn't see their eyes, or they way they were acting, Claudia. Something really bad has happened where they're from."

"And they were shot full of tranquilizers because Abby -- the other one -- attacked Helen?"

"No," Ryan sighed. "They were shot because one of the men put a gun to Abby's head to tell her to get off of Helen and Connor went berserk. Before we could make sense of it, some of the men were firing and the two of them were down."

"You shot me?!"

"No, Ryan didn't do any of the shooting," Cutter told him. "He tried to stop them, but a few of those men were new."

"And it will be a long time before they're allowed back in the field again." Ryan took a little personally that they had shot at his friends. However, almost as important was that they hadn't followed orders.

Cutter looked at Stephen. "You saw something. I heard you try to stop Connor."

"His eyes," Stephen said. "As soon as that gun went near his Abby --" And wow, that really didn't sound right to him. "-- there was something that changed his eyes. It was like he was seeing something else, something where she had been in trouble like that before." He shook his head. "I've seen people get lost in memories, but I've never seen them react like he did to a trigger."

"You would do the same thing if it was our Abby," Connor pointed out, jostling his legs.

"Probably," he admitted. "It was just really frightening to see _you_ snap like that."

"I could, maybe," Connor replied. When everyone in the room looked at him, he shrugged a little. "I'm just saying it's possible. Just because some version of me is a bad ass action guy doesn't mean that he's lost his mind."

"They're not insane," Abby said defensively. "They've been hurt, and Cutter, you and Ryan heard what Connor said about being held hostage. Who knows what could have happened to them?!"

"Hostage?" Connor squeaked.

Abby nodded. "They were upset that Ryan's team were called in as extra security. The other me -- and guys, we have got to come up with nicknames or something for them because this is hurting my head -- seemed pretty bitter. She thought that we were inferring that they weren't human due to coming through the anomaly. The other you said that at least it was better than being on a velociraptor's menu or being held hostage by a crazy bitch."

"And then Helen arrived and Abby attacked her," Claudia said, not liking what all of this was leading to in her mind.

"Connor didn't even try to stop her," Ryan added. "He saw Professor Lester and moved so Abby had a clear shot at her."

"Guys? If the other me spoke about being a hostage, and then the other Abby attacked Helen... does that mean that in their world, Helen is responsible for whatever has them scared and all action soldiers?"

Connor's question made the room go silent for a few moments. It was something that none of them wanted to think about.

"She's your ex-wife, Cutter, and Stephen's ex-whatever," Claudia finally said. "What do you guys think?"

 

 _The anomaly was open and the sounds that were coming from it made most of the group of people uncomfortable. However, the standoff in front of the anomaly was what was garnering the most attention._

 _"Helen, let her go. You don't want to do this."_

 _"No, Quinn, I'm pretty sure I do. You and your army boy there won't take a chance at shooting me while I have the lizard girl. We're going to leave and you're going to back off and let me go, and Connor is going to come with me."_

 _"The hell we are," Becker snapped, placing himself in front of Connor. "You're not taking Abby or Connor."_

 _Against Becker's wishes, Connor stepped up beside him. The gun that was place against Abby's head had fear tearing at his insides. He could see the fear in her eyes that she was desperately trying to hide. He knew without a doubt that Abby had come to the same conclusion that he had. If Helen didn't get what she wanted right now, then someone was going to die. From the way Helen kept glancing at Becker, Connor knew that he was going to lose either Abby or Becker if he didn't do anything._

 _"I'll come with you, Helen," he said, and his voice was surprisingly calm. He didn't think he would be able to sound so calm when he was terrified of losing one or both of the people he loved. "I'll come with you, but you have got to let Abby go and not hurt her. If you hurt her, you'll die and you won't get what you want. You'll never get what you want."_

 _Helen smirked at him. "I don't think so, Connor. You'll come with me and do what I say, or you'll never see her again."_

 _"Connor," Becker bit out. "Don't you dare."_

 _"I have to," Connor said as he shook his head. "You heard her, she'll kill Abby. I can't let that happen."_

 _"She won't hurt her," Danny said. "She's just trying to scare you into doing what she wants."_

 _"Quinn, I killed my husband, and I loved him at one time. What makes you think I'll hesitate when it comes to anyone else?"_

 _Becker reached out to grab Connor and yank him out of harm's way, but Connor was faster than he expected._

 _"Connor!"_

 _Connor didn't look back at him. He stood in front of Helen. "All right, you've got me. Now let Abby go."_

 _Helen smirked, and then stepped suddenly backward into the anomaly, taking Abby with her._

 _"No!" Connor shouted, diving into the anomaly after them._

 

"Abby!" Connor shouted, his eyes coming open as he sat up. The dimness of the room surprised him and he waited for his eyes to adjust.

It looked like he was on a cot in one of the cells at the ARC. Panicked, he scrambled to his feet and then clenched his fists to calm himself. Abby was in the cell with him and lying on the cot across the room. He moved quickly to her side, feeling for a pulse. When he felt the beat of her heart, he almost gasped out loud.

Frowning, he touched her shoulder. He didn't know what they had been shot with, or how much, but he had to wake her up and they had to figure out a way out of here. Helen was here, which meant that he and Abby had to get out of here -- and now.

"Abby," he whispered against her ear. "Abby, come on, you have to wake up. We've got trouble." He watched her struggling to wake up in response to his alert and he reached for her hand. "Come on, love."

Abby's eyes opened and then closed again. He was afraid she had succumbed to the tranquilizer again, but then she opened her eyes and looked at him.

"Helen," she said in a harsh whisper.

"I know. She's alive, love, and we're in a cell at the ARC."

Alarm crossed Abby's features, but she quickly masked it as she sat up. "They locked us up." Her voice was bitter. "Stephen and Cutter let them lock us up."

He reached out to run his hand along her hair. "I know. But we'll get out of here and we'll figure out what's going on. We always do, yeah?"

Abby nodded her head, and then winced as pain lanced through it. "What did they shoot us with?"

"I don't know, but it sure packs a wallop." He frowned. "You don't look so good, love."

"I'll be all right, Connor. It's probably just a side effect of the tranquilizer."

He shook his head, knowing full well that she was lying to him. "No, I don't think so. You like you do when your head is bothering you. You have that look like you get sometimes ever since she --" He knew that his voice was laced with panic, but when it came to Abby's well being, he couldn't help it.

"Connor, don't." She placed her fingers against his lips. "Don't go there. I'm all right and you worrying about something you don't need to isn't going to get us out of here."

Connor recognized that tone of voice. It was her _I'm tough and there's nothing wrong with me_ tone that she got when she was determined to do something that they both knew she shouldn't be trying to do. However, in this case, he had to concede that they didn't have much choice.

After they got out of here and figured out what was going on and _where_ they were, maybe then they could find a way home. Maybe then he could get her to a doctor.

He turned his head as the door opened and immediately put himself in front of Abby. He heard her get to her feet behind him, but his attention was on the woman that came through the door.

"Abby. Connor. Good, you're awake. I'm Claudia Brown."

He heard Abby's gasp at the same time he said "Jenny?"


	3. Chapter 3

"You know that they won't be happy with you for killing yourself like this when they get back."

Becker looked up as Sarah slid into the booth next to him and Jenny sat down next to Danny. He had been studying his beer very closely while he and Danny talked. Sarah and Jenny were both carrying baskets of food.

"The two of you are going to eat if we have to sit on you and shove it down your throats." That was Jenny's no-nonsense voice and Becker managed a faint smile.

"I'm pretty sure that Danny has had that threatened before," he said, looking down at the basket of food that was placed in front of him. "I'm not really hungry."

"I don't care if you think that you're hungry or not," Sarah snapped. "You are going to eat. I can count on one hand the times I have seen the two of you eat anything resembling nutritious food."

Danny poked at the burger in the basket in front of him. "Nutritious?"

"I knew you wouldn't eat anything that didn't look suitably greasy," Jenny said tartly.

"We're worried, too," Sarah said gently. "They are our friends, too, you guys. Just because you're men doesn't mean you get to hold the market on guilt and grief."

"You're not the ones that failed them," Becker said, refusing to look at either woman. "It was my job to protect them and keep them safe. They loved me and counted on me and I failed them when they needed me the most."

"That's not true, nor is it fair," Jenny disagreed. "There was no way to avoid what happened. We've all been over it so many times. Helen was waiting and there is no doubt that she planned all of it out that day."

"I should have shot her when I realized who she was," Danny said sourly. "Maybe then she would never have been able to grab Abby."

"Could have, should have, would have," Jenny shook her head. "The two of you are forgetting the bigger picture. We _know_ they're alive now. It's no longer just hope and wishful thinking. You saw them, and that means we now have a better chance to find them and bring them home where they belong."

Becker reluctantly took a bite of the burger and chewed while the others talked. To him, the burger tasted just the same as everything else had for the last two years. It was like he was biting into a mouthful of wood. Of course, he wasn't about to say that out loud and earn the ire of the two women with them. He took another drink of his beer before flagging down someone to bring them more. It wouldn't be long. He and Danny were well known here.

"We were so close," he finally said. "We yelled their names and we saw them start running our way. The blasted thing closed before we could get them through."

"It will open again," Jenny nodded. "We know that. That same anomaly has opened so many times since the day they disappeared."

"But there's no pattern to it, Jenny," Danny shook his head in disgust. "That's one of the most frustrating things about it. We don't know when. We never know _when_. It could be a few days or it could be another year before it opens. They may not have that much time!"

Sarah flinched and then she looked at Jenny. "I should."

Jenny sighed, her mouth tightening.

Becker looked between them at the same time that Danny spoke. "Tell us what."

"You are not allowed to throw a fit," Jenny warned. "Not either of you, and not here." She didn't relish having to get them out of lock up yet _again_.

"What are you hiding from us?" Becker's voice was low and the tone was harder than he was used to hearing from himself.

"We haven't been hiding anything," Sarah said, her usually compassionate voice taking on the hint of ice. "I've been researching some things and the other team brought something to my attention from their last mission."

"Sarah." Danny's voice held far more patience than anyone could have expected it to have. "Do you have some kind of news about Abby and Connor?"

She nodded, almost reluctantly. "I do. You're not going to like it, though."

Danny looked over at Becker and then clamped his hand down on his arm to hold him still. Without looking away from him, he spoke to both women. "If you know something, then I suggest that you tell us and quit dancing around it."

"Fine, but you both remember that you saw them both alive only yesterday, you understand me?" Jenny's voice was full of fire. "They are _alive_ and we are going to bring them home. That is not a question up for debate. It's a cold hard fact."

"Damn you both, what the hell are you holding back?"

Sarah swallowed her retort when she saw the real fear that was in Becker's eyes now. He was expecting her to tell him the worst. She reached out and placed a gentle hand on where Danny was holding onto his arm. "I have a journal of notes. It looks like the journal was originally Helen's."

"Originally?" Danny's voice was so low that Sarah had to strain to hear it. "What do you mean originally?"

"The last several pages looked to be in Connor's handwriting."

"This should be good, right? It means that they've both been keeping track of what has been going on."

"And we can use their notes to help us get to the right place and bring them home," Jenny said firmly. She, of course, knew what was in the journal and she was determined to keep the two men focused on the fact that they knew their friends were alive.

No matter what Connor had written on those last pages of the book.

No matter what the journal said was happening.

 

"I understand things must be a little confusing for the two of you, but I'm not Jenny. My name is Claudia Brown. I work with James Lester, Nick Cutter, Stephen Hart, Abby Maitland, Tom Ryan and Connor Temple here at the ARC." She gave them what she hoped was a comforting smile. "Sometimes we are joined at sights by Professor Helen Lester -- whom you met yesterday."

"Cutter." Connor said evenly as his hands clenched and unclenched on the metal table the three of them were now sitting at.

"Excuse me?"

"Her name is Helen Cutter," Connor repeated, looking up. "She's Professor Cutter's ex-wife and an all-around psycho."

Claudia didn't even blink. She turned to Abby. "And suppose you tell me why you attacked her yesterday?"

"Connor already answered that question." Abby said tiredly, looking away from her.

"Helen Cutter is Professor Cutter's ex-wife and all around psycho?" That was an answer? Apparently it was because they both nodded and Claudia closed her eyes a moment. "So, you tried to kill her." She was sure that this conversation would make sense at some point. She was hoping that the time would be sooner rather than later. She was beginning to get a headache.

"It's no worse than what she's done to us, or tried to do to Abby," Connor burst out. "She even tried to --"

"Connor, don't." Abby reached out to take his hand, to keep him from telling Claudia what Helen had done to her. "It doesn't matter. It's not like anyone here is going to believe us. They shot us, remember?"

Claudia didn't like the dejected tone from the woman that resembled her friend here so much. "That would be where you are probably wrong," Claudia said crisply. "On your feet. You need to come with me. Immediately."

"Where are we going," Abby demanded suspiciously.

It was a little painful that Abby didn't trust her. She hoped that she could find out why in due course and show the other woman that she wasn't a threat -- not to her. "It's classified. You'll be debriefed when we get you there."

Neither Abby or Connor liked that answer, but they looked at each other and the same resignation was in both of their eyes. _What choice do we have?_

As soon as they stepped out of the room with Claudia, a group of people surrounded them. Most of them looked like the same guards from when they arrived.

"It's alright, lass," a voice said from Abby's right. "You're safe. No one is going to hurt you."

Abby's eyes widened when she recognized the military man that had been in charge when they arrived through the anomaly. Her eyes darted to Connor and she saw that Stephen was on the other side of him.

"What's going on?" She asked quietly.

"We'll explain later," a voice said from behind her. She recognized the voice as being Nick's and her curiosity grew even stronger. Once outside of the ARC, she and Connor were loaded into a van. The military man and Stephen rode with them and a driver, while they others got into another van. Abby and Connor against exchanged looks, and she reached to squeeze his hand. This was making even less sense than anything else that had happened since they came through the anomaly into this time.

The drive didn't last very long and soon she and Connor were being escorted out of the van, into a building and then into a lift. Once the lift stopped, it opened up into a very wide living area of some kind. It was furnished modestly and Abby could see the edge of a breakfast bar from where they were standing. She was about to ask again what was going on, but she was distracted by the fact the other versions of her and Connor were engaged in an argument.

"We are not calling them Aragorn and Arwen, Connor! That's just too much, even for you."

"Look, we can't keep calling them Abby and Connor. It's going to get bleeding confusing while we're trying to put this mystery together."

"Not Arwen and Aragorn and not Luke and Leia. Luke and Leia were brother and sister and from what I'm seeing, they are not exactly of a sibling nature." She shook her head. "That would just be way too creepy."

"Then we could call them Han and Leia. Best love story in the movies! You can’t go wrong with Star Wars."

"They're people, not characters in a movie! Honestly, Connor."

From beside her, her own Connor cleared his throat, making their younger versions turn to them. He squeezed her hand and gave them a faint smile. "If you need new names for us to make this easier on you --" He stopped and looked at her. "You could call us Sid and Nancy?" When she nodded her agreement, he looked over the rest of the people gathered, his eyes falling on Cutter. "Sid and Nancy," he repeated again. "It was how you first introduced us to Captain Becker a few years ago."

"Captain Becker," the military man that had escorted them asked her. "Who is he? I don't have a Captain Becker in my unit. Nor any Becker, for that matter."

"And you would be?" _Sid's_ voice was calm, all things considered. "We know everyone else, well sort of." He gave a small smile to Claudia. "But we've never seen you in our lives."

"Captain Tom Ryan," the military man said with a frown. How could they not know him? He'd worked side by side with them for the past few years.

"Oh." The name was familiar but he wasn't able to place his face at this point in time.

 _Nancy's_ bottom lip trembled slightly as she looked at Stephen for a long moment. Swallowing hard, she looked away from Stephen and then she looked at Abby, Connor and Nick. "Captain Becker is who Lester hired to protect us after Stephen was killed."


	4. Chapter 4

The flat was incredibly silent as Sarah finished reading the last page of the journal. It was the kind of silence that happened right before a storm or an explosion. Sarah and Jenny were positive it was about to be both. It was why they had insisted that Becker and Danny come to Sarah’s place before they would tell them what they had found in the journals.

"That bitch _shot_ Abby?"

It was Becker's voice that started the storm. Neither woman was surprised.

"According to Connor she did. He thought that Abby was dead or dying until she woke up a few hours later. She was in pain and bleeding heavily, but he got the bleeding to stop. Her pulse was hard to find because he was upset and he was afraid that if he touched her the wrong way, she really would die. The problem is, Abby thinks it was a through and through with all of the pain and blood there was. From what he’s written down here, Connor doesn't think so. He thinks the bullet is still in Abby's head because she's having painful headaches and sometimes it's hard for her to focus on what they're doing. She’s been getting sick, too." Sarah looked at both men. "He thinks that Abby is running out of time, guys. He thinks that she's dying. Abby, of course, keeps telling him not to worry, but he can see what’s happening to her even if she can’t."

"Where were they when this happened?" Becker clenched his fists as he started pacing the main room of Jenny's flat. "What else does he say in the next journal?"

"Helen was pulling them through different anomalies into different time periods and when Abby got shot it was because she blew up at Helen for using her to threaten Connor. She fought back and took a swing at her, wanting Connor to escape. Helen lost her composure and shot Abby. When Abby fell, Connor flipped and attacked Helen, taking both him and Helen over a cliff. Helen didn't survive but Connor did." Jenny said softly. "Helen didn’t survive the fall because they fought and Connor crushed her skull with the gun she had used on Abby."

Becker closed his eyes. It couldn’t have been an easy thing for Connor to take a life. Before this, he had always tried to see the good in everyone. It was hard for him to imagine the other man killing someone.

Danny seemed to read his mind.

“If she hurt Abby, then all bets were off when it came to how Connor would react,” he said, leaning against the wall and running a hand over his face. “Abby was the only reason he went with the bitch.”

“Not the only reason,” Sarah shook her head. “Abby didn’t fight back when all of this started because she was trying to protect Connor and Becker. Connor did the same thing. He knew that if he didn’t do what Helen wanted, either Becker or Danny would get shot trying to help him and Abby. When Helen held the gun to Abby’s head, he knew that he was the closest and if he went with her, he could keep all of you safe.”

“How long ago did this happen?” Becker bit out. “How long ago did Abby get hurt and Connor kill Helen?”

Jenny looked at him and Danny. “If we’re taking today’s date and subtracting the number of days that Connor has notated in these journals? Then the shooting would have happened approximately five months ago.”

Becker’s face turned pale, and Sarah hastily continued.

“But, you saw them the other day. You saw them and Abby was alive. Becker, remember, they are both alive and we will get them home.”

Becker took a deep breath and then another before he finally nodded. “Yeah, Danny and I saw both of them. Whatever is happening with Abby’s injury, it hasn’t taken her down.”

“That just means that we have to work harder,” Jenny finally said. “Because we don’t know what kind of condition either one of them are in after being out there for a little more than two years now. At the least, they are dangerously malnourished. At the worst…” She shook her head, not wanting to finish that sentence.

“At the worst, Abby’s got a ticking bomb in her head and they’re running out of time,” Danny finished.

Both of the women nodded reluctantly.

“If Abby’s running out of time, then so is Connor,” Becker’s voice was quiet. “If he loses her in all of this, he’ll give up, too. We all know that.”

“That’s not necessarily true, Becker,” Sarah argued softly. “The two of them love you, too, you know that. They’d fight like hell to get back to you.”

“I know they would, but in a situation like the one they’ve been in? They’ve had only each other to rely on. That means that they’ve kept each other fighting and holding on no matter what they’re going through.” Becker sighed quietly. “But if Abby dies while they’re so far away from home and safety, it will break Connor and he’ll die, too. If we lose Abby, then we’ll lose them both.”

“And even if we managed to get Connor back alive after that,” Danny added. “It still wouldn’t be the same. They were together in hell and if only one of them make it out, the other one will never recover from it.”

“I’ve seen it happen to relatives and close friends in combat,” Becker explained. “It doesn’t matter who is back at home waiting for them. If they lose their friend and partner something breaks inside them and is left out on the field.”

“That is not going to happen in this case,” Jenny argued. “We will get them home and we will get Abby proper medical care before anything worse happens. She will _not_ die out wherever they are. Do I make myself clear, boys?” When they didn’t respond, Jenny raised an eyebrow. “Are you giving up on the two of them after all of this time that you’ve been working yourselves almost to death to get them back?”

“Of course we’re not,” Becker snapped, insulted that she would even suggest such a thing.

“Then get that beaten look out of your eyes because we have a lot of work to do.”

 

 _Nancy’s_ announcement caused the room to go silent with shock for a long moment.

Abby made a distressed sound and Stephen pulled her close to him, looking from Cutter to Ryan and then back to _Sid_ and _Nancy_.

“Where was I, then?” Captain Ryan asked them levelly. “I’m the one who usually watches everyone’s backs when we go out.”

“You weren’t there, sir,” _Nancy_ responded. “Like Connor said… I mean _Sid_ … we’ve never seen you before in our lives. We don’t know who you are.”

“I’ve been with you guys since the team was formed,” Ryan insisted.

 _Nancy_ shook her head. “I’m telling you, we don’t know who you are!” Her face had gone a little pale. “Back home, we’ve never seen you before. I don’t know your name and I don’t know your face. Stephen was always the one that tried to protect us and taught me to shoot. When he died, Lester hired Becker to make sure no one else died, only it didn’t work!”

 _Sid_ made a sound of concern as he stepped closer to _Nancy_. “Easy, love,” he soothed, running a hand over her hair very carefully. He barely touched her, but she obviously took comfort from his nearness. “Your head is bothering you, again. You’re in pain, I can see it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured, trying to brush it off. “It’s not important.”

“Well, that’s something that obviously doesn’t change no matter which Abby it is,” Stephen said wryly, even as the younger Abby elbowed him in the ribs. “According to her, nothing that hurts her important.”

“It is important,” _Sid_ insisted, ignoring Stephen. “Abby, you need –“

“We need to get home, Connor,” she responded, cutting off whatever it was he was about to say. “We need to get back and make sure everyone is all right. We don’t even know –“

“They are, Abby. They are. You know that they wouldn’t allow anything to happen to them until they found us – no matter how long it’s been.”

“How long have you been separated from your friends,” Abby asked the older version of herself.

 _Nancy_ looked at her quietly for a long moment. “A little more than two years,” she said finally. _Sid_ nodded in agreement with her. “Connor has kept better track of the time than I’ve been able to, but from the times we’ve talked about it, it’s been about two years and a couple of months since we went through the anomaly.” It was obvious from the tone of her voice that there was a lot more to their story than what she was saying.

Claudia was taking a mental note of everything that was being said and not being said. Every time _Nancy_ spoke, there was a sense of pain and sadness in her voice. However, something else she was noticing was that _Nancy_ stopped _Sid_ from revealing too much about where they were from or what had happened to them. She found that incredibly worrisome and she wondered what the two of them were hiding from all them.

“Where have you been all of this time?” Connor asked what everybody else was thinking. “If the two of you have been separated from everyone for two years, what happened?”

 _Sid_ frowned and _Nancy_ shook her head. “We don’t know what kind of damage that it might do if we reveal too much. We can’t risk doing anything that might make changes in this time line.”

“It’s one of the things that has always been the biggest rule when working with the anomalies,” _Sid_ said. “We are always very careful not to let anything interfere with anything that comes through the anomalies and when we go through them, we don’t let anything get left behind.”

“Something obviously went wrong in those plans,” Cutter said carefully. “Because the two of you got lost and ended up here with us, instead.”

“It wasn’t our fault we got lost,” _Sid_ protested, staying next to _Nancy_ as he defended them.

“No one ever said that it was,” Stephen said quietly. “We’re just trying to figure out what happened and why the two of you came through that anomaly to our time.”

“We thought it was the right one to get us back to our correct time.” _Nancy’s_ voice was sour. “Instead, we found ourselves in a world with alternate versions of ourselves living a life that never even happened. Not only that, we were shot and locked up.”

“That was a mistake,” Ryan shook his head regretfully. “Those men have been punished and I’m very sorry that it happened. They shouldn’t have fired on you.”

“And locking us up at the ARC?” _Sid_ questioned, tilting his head at him.

“That’s normal protocol when something happens that we’re not sure of,” Ryan explained. “We didn’t know where you were from or even what was going on.”

“That’s not the best way to greet people,” _Sid_ pointed out. “I would re-evaluate your greeting procedures for new life before you accidentally start an intergalactic incident when other planets finally decide to make contact with us.”

“The last thing we’re concerned with is alien life forms,” Claudia shook her head. “What we need to know is what happened so that we can help you and make sure that nothing that could be hunting you comes through and causes any trouble here.”

“There’s no one hunting us,” _Nancy_ argued. “Not any longer.”

“Who was hunting you?” Stephen questioned.

The two of them went silent, exchanging looks with each other.

“Why did you attack Professor Lester?” This time it was Abby’s soft voice that questioned them as she looked at _Nancy_. “And why did Connor attack the security team?”

“You don’t really to know the answers to that,” _Sid_ shook his head.

“We understand that this is all very confusing to you –“ Cutter started to say to the two of them.

“You don’t understand anything!” _Nancy_ burst out. “You don’t get it and you never will because where we come from all of you are dead!”


	5. Chapter 5

It wasn't too much of a surprise that in the midst of all of the research and planning that Becker slipped away to the shooting range. It wasn't just that he needed something now to vent his frustration on, it was more than that. Now, after all of this time, there was real hope of getting Abby and Connor back and he needed some time alone. The shooting range was one of the few places that he could do that. The shooting range was the one place that he could guarantee that very few people would follow him. Jess knew better than to bother him here and Jenny never came down here. The only one that might interfere with his solitude would be Danny, but he wasn't concerned about that right now.

No, right now he needed to take some time to just breathe and not give in to all of the emotions that were now threatening to overwhelm him.

 _Abby was in trouble._

Oh, he had known that whatever was happening to Abby and Connor couldn't have been good. After all, they had been missing for two years. Before, he could only have imagined what they were going through because they were out of reach and at the mercy of a known killer. He had quite the imagination and he had envisioned all kinds of things happening to them without him there for protection.

However, his imagination had been nothing compared to the realities of hearing things in Connor's own words. The fact that he had been forced to kill was going to weigh heavily on him and Becker wanted to be there for him. Connor should never have had to take a life -- that's what the rest of them were for. Hell, he would have expected Abby to kill Abby long before he would have expected Connor to do so.

And then he remembered _why_ Connor had been pushed to kill. That was the part that had him fighting down the panic and hiding from the rest of the team for a few moments.

Helen had shot Abby.

She had shot Abby and Connor was worried that Abby hadn't healed.

After Sarah had read them that entry, Becker had later taken the journal so he could read those words for himself. He didn't know why he had needed to see them on the page, but he had. Now, those words would be forever seared in his memory.

 _Abby says she's fine, but I know that she's not. I thought she was dying on me when it first happened -- after I killed Helen, I mean. She was so still and pale and there was so much blood. I didn't know what to do. I cleaned her face and head up as best as I could and I held my shirt to her head until the bleeding seemed to stop. What if it didn't really stop though? What if it only stopped coming out and her brain is bleeding in her skull? I was so relieved when she opened her eyes again that I think I cried. All right, I know I cried. It's not like anyone is ever going to see this, after all. I cried but Abby kept telling me the shot hadn't been that bad and it had just grazed her. I know better, though. I've only been right alongside her now for five years. She's not looking like Abby and that's how I know she's in trouble. She has really bad headaches sometimes -- worse than she's ever had before. It scares me because Abby isn't one to mention she's not feeling well. I have got to get her home because I don't think she's ever going to recover without a medic. I'm really scared that if I don't get her home she's going to die. I can't let that happen. Not to Abby and not when she was only in this mess because of me and my damned gadgets..._

Now, Becker closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. He had to stay in control and he had to keep the panic from rising up. You couldn't be a proper captain and rescue the people you love if you were seen to be having panic attacks.

It was bad enough that Connor thought Abby was going to die, but the fact that he was blaming himself made things so much worse.

"I'm sorry, Connor," he whispered, clenching his fists at his sides as he fought back the tears that wanted to come. "I'm so sorry that I didn't protect you better. I can't make that up to you or to Abby, but I swear that when we get you back again, I will always protect you and keep you safe. You'll never have to be scared again. I won't allow that to happen."

Becker sighed and ran his hand over his face. He couldn't believe he was starting to fall about now when they had the best chance they'd had in two years to find their missing friends and get them back. This was not the time that he should be doing this. The time for falling apart has been two years ago when they had feared they would never get them back from Helen in one piece. The time for falling apart had been six months later when others that started working for the ARC believed them to be dead. The time for falling apart had been when the Minister wanted them to stop working on the anomaly Helen had disappeared through and declare Abby and Connor deceased.

The time for falling apart had long passed and he needed to pull everything he was into shape because they needed him more than ever now. Connor was alive. Abby was alive. That was all that mattered. He would deal with worrying about their conditions after they were back where they belonged.

Because they were going to come home. He and Danny and Jenny and Sarah were going to make sure of that.

"We're coming for you. You just have to hold on until we get to you. Just hold on for a little bit longer."

 

The room was quiet as they tried to deal with the shock of _Nancy's_ words and in those few moments, _Sid_ had wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. He ran a hand gently along her back as he buried his face in her hair for a moment. He could only imagine how hard this was for the others, but his concern was for the woman he was holding.

Ryan cleared his throat a few times and then sighed. "What did you mean when you said that all of us are dead where you come from?"

"Just what she said," _Sid_ responded tiredly. "In our world, we don't know anything about you. Claudia doesn't exist in our world, either. Stephen was killed and Nick was murdered. We're the only ones, besides Lester, who are left of the original team."

Abby made a sound of horror, her hand tightening around Stephen's. "He was killed?"

"Abby, hush," Stephen said, pulling her closer to him. "That's not me. I'm right here and nothing like that is going to happen to me."

Abby wouldn't let this question go, however. She looked at her doppelganger. "What happened to Stephen?"

"He was killed when he sacrificed himself to save Nick during an escape of the predators at the ARC," _Sid's_ voice was full of regret. "There was an attack on the ARC and the only way to trap the creatures was if someone went into the enclosure to lock the door from the inside."

Abby covered her mouth with her free hand. "Oh god."

Stephen shook his head. "There was no other way, was there?"

 _Nancy_ shook her head. "Not from what Nick told us after the rest of us escaped our own traps and got outside of the building."

Abby's eyes filled with tears as she looked at _Nancy_ and _Sid_. "My god. You guys have seen all of your friends and family die. No wonder you don't trust any of us."

"What I don't understand is why you say that the two of us aren't in your world," Claudia said. "Captain Ryan and I have been a part of your team since we all came together when investigating the first anomaly."

 _Sid_ let out a heavy breath. "I've never heard of Captain Ryan until we came here. But... we've heard the name Claudia Brown, before. Nick talked about her a few times, but he was the only one that knew anything about her. Apparently, there was something that happened when he went through an anomaly with --" _Nancy_ made a small sound and this caused _Sid_ to clear his throat. "When he came back, she was no longer there and no one but him had any memory of her. I'm still not sure what all of that was about, but when Jenny started working with us, it seemed to help him heal a little bit at a time." He looked at Captain Ryan. "It could be that you would have been part of something and disappeared at the same time his Claudia did."

"He didn't like to talk about it too much," _Nancy_ said softly. "It just caused him so much pain that he had all of the memories and feelings about someone that none of the rest of us had any memory of. He had been in love with her, I think. He started getting over whatever had happen when Jenny was hired by Lester. They started falling in love and she was helping him move forward before he died."

"Which brings me to the next question I have," Cutter interjected. "You said that both Stephen and I was killed. How did I die?"

 _Sid_ and _Nancy_ looked like they didn't want to answer the question from the way they both looked away from the rest of the group. _Sid_ cleared his throat a couple of times and _Nancy_ chewed on her bottom lip.

"Look, you two," Cutter said with a trace of impatience. "We've figured out that you're not exactly from our future, but some kind of alternate time line. Telling me what really happened isn't going to foul up anything in this time line. So stop avoiding the question and just answer me directly."

 _Nancy_ reached her hand up to squeeze _Sid's_ arm where it was still around her. "I'll do it," she whispered softly. "I know how much it still hurts."

"It still hurts you, too, love," _Sid_ protested. "I'm not the only one it expected."

"Yes, but I wasn't the one to find him and stay with him as he died." She ran a hand through his hair, then lifted her head to look at Cutter. "You were betrayed by someone you knew and shot when there was another attack on the ARC. You tried to stop the person who set the bombs and created a clone of you. They shot you because you wouldn't accept their way of doing things." She took a shuddering breath. "Connor... my Connor... _Sid_ went looking for you when you didn't show up in the gathering outside. He was with you when you died and carried you outside to the rest of us. A part of all of us died when we lost you and I think it broke Jenny more than she'll ever admit to us." She gave a sympathetic smile to Claudia, who had reached out to grasp his forearm.

"Who did it? Who killed Nick?"

Stephen's voice was slightly husky from his reaction to all of the news they were finding out. It wasn't that he didn't believe them, it was just that it was so much to learn in a short amount of time.

 _Nancy_ swallowed hard. "You... it's not important."

"It's pretty important to us," Ryan said, leveling his gaze on her. "If we know who the enemy is then we can be on the look out, just in case, and keep it from happening to him."

 _Sid_ shook his head. "There's nothing you could do. None of us were able to because we didn't even see it coming. We should have, because of Stephen, but there had been so many changes and changes in security protocols that we thought we were all safe. None of us were."

"What do you mean, because of Stephen?" Claudia demanded.

"The same person who caused Stephen's death shot Cutter," _Nancy_ explained, looking at the floor.

"And who was that," Abby's voice was gentle. She knew she wasn't going to like the answer. She just knew it and the fact that this conversation had caused her alternate time line counterpart to pale considerably had done nothing to alleviate that worry.

"Helen Cutter."

You could have heard a pin drop when _Nancy_ said that. Just in case, _Sid_ pulled _Nancy_ behind him in a protective pose as he watched the reactions of everyone else in the room.

"Helen did all of that?" Nick voice was disbelieving.

"Yes, she did that and so much more," There was bitterness in _Sid's_ voice. "The day Stephen died, she and her partner, Leek, had locked locked several of us in in another cage far from where the rest of your were being held." He pulled _Nancy_ closer to him with his hand. " _Nancy_ got us out of the pen where there were a couple of prehistoric creatures hungry enough to come after us."

"How did she get you guys out of such a bad situation." The voice was Stephen's and he wasn't sure he wanted to know how they had managed to get out of there in one piece. "It sounds that you guys were in pretty dangerous straights."

The older Connor took a shuddering breath. He had seen his Abby in so many dangerous situations and it was hard for him to talk about any of those times where she could have died. But the situation in question was one that she had come too close to death -- as did the rest of them. " _Nancy_ drew off the attention of a saber toothed cat it attacked her while the rest of us got out of the room."

"She did what?" Stephen burst out in shock as his own face paled slightly.

"It needed to see one of us as the most dangerous impediment to it having a meal," _Nancy_ explained. "I made myself the enemy and therefore bait so that everyone else could get out of the room."

"That would definitely work," Abby agreed. "Become another predator and he would lose his focus on his meal until he could take out the other predator."

"He clawed her arm pretty good, but she fought him off and made him back away from the rest of us. She used her martial arts skills on him and kick boxed him into a wall." There was definite pride in _Sid's_ words. "None of us realized she had gotten hurt until much later, though." There was a slight frown at that.

"We had more important things to worry about at that time," _Nancy_ murmured gently. She looked at the younger Connor. "If you ever meet a woman named Caroline Steele, you just send her on her way and don't believe a damn thing she tells you."

"Yeah," _Sid_ agreed. "Because she's a two-faced spy who causes you to hurt Abby's feelings more than once."

"Who was she spying for?" Claudia asked.

"A man named Oliver Leek who was working with Helen Cutter."

"There's no Oliver Leek working for the ARC at the present time," Claudia informed them.

"That's good for you, then, Claudia," _Nancy_ said. "According to our Nick, Leek showed up out of nowhere right when you disappeared from the time line."

Claudia shook her head. She was still trying to deal with the fact that she had never existed in the world these two were from -- much less that so much else had gone wrong for them. "So anyone named Leek or Steele, we need to beware of."

 _Sid_ nodded in affirmation. "Yeah, because if those two show up, then it's the beginning of the end for all of you."

"Well, isn't that a pleasant thought," commented a new voice that had everyone's heads whipping around to the entrance to see James Lester coming into the flat. "I don't like things that are signs of the end. It makes it much harder to keep things tidy and out of the public's eye."

It was Claudia who found her voice first. "James, what are you doing here?"

"I went to the containment cells to see for myself the people that came through the anomaly who looked like Miss Maitland and Mr. Temple. Imagine my surprise to find them both missing and a wayward lab technician happened to tell me that they had been escorted off the premises by Captain Ryan and his men." He looked at Ryan with a raised eyebrow, but the military captain didn't look the least bit regretful. "It didn't take very long for me to deduce that you brought them to my guest flat because taking them to one of your places would have been too obvious if the wrong people were looking for you."

"They didn't belong locked up like that," Ryan said. "They're people and the new recruits didn't follow orders. They were just defending themselves. It wasn't right for them to be punished for it."

Lester gave Ryan a look and then turned his gaze on _Nancy_. "So, you're the one who tried to kill my wife." He mused. "Pity, you should have tried harder."

 _Nancy's_ eyes widened. "Your wife," she managed to get out, even though her throat had gone completely dry as she listened to him talk.

 _Sid_ tensed up next to her. "Who exactly is your wife?"

Lester looked at his team and then turned back to the doppelgangers of his two youngest people. He wasn't the only one to focus his attention on the two. _Nancy's_ face had gone deathly white whereas there were two dark spots color high on _Sid's_ cheeks.

"Professor Helen Lester is my wife," Lester said calmly. "She used to be Helen Cutter."

"Abby!" _Sid_ shouted as she collapsed and he barely managed to stop her from hitting the floor.


	6. Chapter 6

Becker looked dubious as he examined the different scientific instruments that Sarah had strewn out over the table in Jenny’s flat. Even knowing Connor like he did he hadn’t realized that one person could have so many items that didn’t clearly show what it was they did. If it hadn’t been for the suspicion he caught in Danny’s eyes, he would have thought that he was the only one of the group that had absolutely no idea what it was that he was looking at. Unlike Danny, however, he didn’t reach to pick up anything from the table. First of all, he didn’t want one of the women to smack him for touching the wrong thing. Second of all, if something on this table was going to be crucial in getting Abby and Connor back home finally he didn’t want to take the risk of accidentally breaking anything.

When Sarah smacked Danny’s hand and retrieved whatever it was he was holding, Becker was glad he had gone with his first instinct. Women and scientists – you don’t touch their paraphernalia without their express permission.

“What is all of this?” Becker finally asked as he watched Sarah and Jenny examining certain things on the table. Every so often, Sarah would write something down in the notebook she was holding.

“Most of this stuff came from Connor’s locker, his flat and stuff that was stored in Cutter’s old office,” Jenny responded. “We’re hoping that something – or even a few somethings – from all of this will help us figure out a way to open an anomaly to the last known whereabouts of Abby and Connor.”

“What if they’re not there,” Danny questioned. “We know from Connor’s journals that they’ve been traveling through any anomaly that opened up in hopes of getting back home.”

Jenny gave him an exasperated look. “Then we look for clues at their last coordinates and we keep trying to open anomalies until we find them.”

“It sounds crazy,” Danny cocked his head as he looked at the two women.

“It’s nothing any crazier than things that you’ve already done, Quinn,” Jenny retorted. “So, in reality, this plan is exactly like something you would think up.”

Becker shrugged. “As far as I’ve understood it, we all make our living off of crazy. This idea seems to fit into the job description quite tidily.”

“The last way that you could describe any of this is tidy, Becker,” Sarah commented as she reached for something on the table that no one else could identify. “However, we’ve already gone through a comprehensive list of tidy and sane. I think it’s time we resort to crazy. It’s the only thing that we really have left.”

“I don’t care whether it’s crazy or tidy,” he said honestly. “I only care about whether it will work or not.” He looked at Jenny. “Will any of this work?”

“It will work,” Jenny said firmly. “It will because we won’t accept anything less. They needed to come home long before now and knowing that Abby is in trouble makes it a more desperate situation. James gave us clearance to do whatever we have to do to insure that this works in our favor.” Her expression gentled as she met his eyes. “Hilary, we will get them back and we will get them back soon. We’re not going to lose Abby and we’re not going to let anything happen to Connor.”

“How will they know,” Danny asked, his voice strangely quiet. His three companions turned to him with questions in their eyes. “How will they know we’re coming for them this time? It’s been over two years and we haven’t been able to make contact with them before this. So, how do we know this time will work and how will they know that we’re trying to find them?”

Sarah smiled slightly. “Because it’s us and it’s _them_ , Danny. They both know us so well and know we would never give up on them. Connor has said so in his journal. They may not have been able to find their own way home, but they have faith in us finding them no matter how long it might take. They know.”

“It’s taken too damn long,” Becker murmured. “It’s taken us too damn long, already. Everything we have tried up until now has always ended up with them being just out of reach.”

“Yes, it has been,” Jenny agreed. “The point is that we have kept trying and we have never stopped looking. They will know this and even if they have started to lose hope in their chances of success on their own, they would never give up hope or belief in us and we are not going to let them down.”

Danny sighed, running a hand over his face. He was tired. He was just so damn tired of fighting and failing the ones he cared about over and over again. He had failed them two years ago and he had failed them each and every time an anomaly had opened and they weren’t there. For two years they had fought and studied and had lost good people in doing so. Now, it was hard to feel optimistic, even in the face of Connor’s own words that spoke about his faith in all of them to bring them home.

“So you think they will be looking over their shoulders all of the time for an anomaly to open?” Becker’s question was an honest one. “No matter what they’re doing now, you really believe they keep looking for one to open up to the correct time? They know better than anyone how unstable and unreliable these things are.”

Sarah gave both men an impatient look. “You have got to be kidding me,” she snapped. “Two years of fighting and searching and you two pick _now_ to lose hope? You two decide to pick _now_ to give up on them?!”

“It’s not that we’re giving up, Sarah,” Becker protested. “It’s just that we’ve been wrong so many times before and we’re tired. We’re tired of letting them down and we’re tired of being slapped in the face with our failure to protect them or rescue them.”

“So do something about it and quit asking pointless questions that aren’t getting us anywhere!” Jenny’s voice was almost a growl. “We have all of this equipment to make sense of and a finite time to do it in! If the two of you have given up on them, you can just get the hell out of here and Sarah and I will figure this out ourselves. We don’t have room in our schedule for any doubts and Abby doesn’t have time for them! Either help us or go the hell home with your tails between your legs and wait for hopelessness to destroy you.”

 

 _Sid’s_ shout of Abby’s name caught everyone off guard enough to freeze them to the spot and that would be the reason that when he grabbed for _Nancy_ , his knees buckled as he went to the floor to break her fall.

“Abby,” he whispered. “Abby, love, it’s all right. It’s going to be okay.” He managed a yelp of surprise as she was lifted up from his lap and he was pulled off of the floor by his arm. He started to fight until he saw that Cutter had picked her up from the floor and laid her on the couch. It was Stephen who had pulled him to a standing position. He shook the other man off and went to kneel next to the couch, his hands ghosting over her face.

“What’s wrong with her,” Ryan asked, his eyes suspicious as he looked at _Nancy’s_ pale face. “What’s happened that you’re not telling us?”

“You mean besides the fact that Helen Cutter pretty much destroyed our lives over and over again?” _Sid_ demanded. “Besides the fact that she has either killed or caused the deaths of people we cared about and then kidnapped the two of us from our own time?” He looked at Lester. “How _could_ you? Stephen being a bloody git I can understand –“

“Hey!” Stephen wasn’t amused by _Sid’s_ definition of his character. Yes, he had cheated on Nick with Helen at one time, but in the end, he had chosen Nick and when he got involved with Abby, a great deal about him had changed.

“—but you, Lester? I always thought you were much smarter and more practical than that. I mean, you married a barmy murdering bitch with delusions of grandeur that are bigger than anyone’s I have ever met. You’ve always been so meticulous and careful.”

 _Sid_ ignored Stephen’s protest. He wasn’t concerned about stroking the other man’s ego at the moment. He had more important things to focus on.

Lester merely raised an eyebrow at _Sid_ and then looked around the room at all of the people who worked for him.

“I think someone needs to tell me what’s going on here, and why two people we know nothing about were removed from ARC property,” he finally said dryly.”And let me be perfectly clear that your jobs are riding on my satisfaction with your explanation.” He looked around the room and his eyes fell on Cutter, who shrugged.

“As I told you years ago, Lester,” Cutter said with a wry smile. “If you don’t like something I’m doing you’re going to have to shoot me.” It was an old, familiar joke between them, but they weren’t prepared for Abby’s emotional reaction.

“That’s _not_ funny at all,” she snapped at Cutter. “Haven’t you listened to anything that they’ve been saying, Cutter? You _did_ get shot and by someone that we’ve all been working with. You _died_.”

“Only, according to them, we weren’t working with her at the time,” Connor said helpfully, trying not to wince under Abby’s glare. “Not that it makes the fact that you get killed any easier to deal with, I’m just saying that in their world we don’t really get betrayed by someone we trust because they never trusted her to begin with.”

“And that makes it so much better,” Claudia muttered in a voice filled with annoyance, shaking her head.

“Well, it kind of does in a way,” Ryan said quietly. “At least we exist here and they weren’t betrayed by someone they worked with for a long time.”

“Dead is still dead.” Claudia retorted. “It doesn’t matter how it happened.”

“No, but it’s less painful than knowing that someone we know killed us. Better to just not exist.” Ryan was feeling pragmatic because it was the one thing he could feel like he was on even ground about.

“I’m waiting,” Lester reminded them, brushing a speck of imaginary dust off of his jacket.

“In our world, Helen Cutter caused the death of Stephen and she killed Cutter.” It was _Nancy’s_ breaking voice that answered him. “She helped create a race of super predators that hunted by sonar and she helped destroy the future. She blew up the ARC on more than one occasion. She used a woman as a hostage to escape incarceration and then murdered her by feeding her to future predators.” She tried to sit up and _Sid_ sat behind her on the couch to prop her up and then wrapped his arms protectively around her. “She used me as a hostage to kidnap Connor out of our own time and we spent a year and a half being dragged through one prehistoric anomaly after another. We haven’t seen our home in over two years and if it hadn’t been for Connor taking such careful notes, we would have lost track of what era we were trapped in.”

Lester just gave her a bland look while the rest of the people in the room had to fight to regain their composure. At least now they had their answers as to why the two doppelgangers looked liked they had been going through hell. If what they were saying was true, they hadn’t been in a normal, safe atmosphere for a long time.

“I see,” Lester finally responded. “And where is she now?”

“She’s very dead,” _Sid_ said, and there was a current of steel in his voice as he met Lester’s eyes.

“How did she die?”

Ryan almost didn’t want _Sid_ to answer Lester’s loaded question because he could see the response in the other man’s eyes. He wanted to protect his people from everything that had happened to this different, traumatized Connor and Abby. That wasn’t all, though. He wanted to wipe that hard anger from the other man and he wanted to fix the pain he could see in the other version of Abby. There was more to come; more that they hadn’t told the group yet, and all of a sudden, he didn’t want to know any more. He knew that he wasn’t going to like what was revealed.

Not one of them were going to like what was revealed in the next few moments. That was a guarantee.

“I killed her,” _Sid_ said very carefully after a few moments. He never looked away from Lester, but his arms around _Nancy_ had filled with tension.


	7. Chapter 7

Sarah sighed as she stretched her back before getting up from the table. She wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting, but it was long enough for her neck to start protesting against her. She shook her head as she walked from the office down to the break room. Hopefully there was still coffee left because she really didn’t feel like waiting for a new pot to brew. She had work to get back to.

She couldn’t explain it, but she knew she was near a breakthrough on the puzzle that was the whereabouts of Connor and Abby. She could just feel that she was close – and this wasn’t a feeling she had experienced in all of the time they had been gone. She hadn’t said anything to the others because she didn’t know exactly what the breakthrough was going to be or how. With her friends in this situation, she knew that she needed to have precise details before she could tell them anything.

She entered the break room and gave the other occupant a surprised smile. “Jess? I didn’t expect to see you in here so late.”

“So early, you mean?” The redhead returned the smile. “Sarah, it’s six in the morning. Have you been here all night?” Before Sarah could answer her, Jess shook her head. “Never mind, that’s a stupid question. The lot of you have been working around the clock lately.” She bit her lip and then looked at Sarah calmly. “Has it done any good?”

Sarah was silent for a moment as she looked at Jess. Most of the others at the ARC had made remarks about them just needing to forget the missing people and get on with their lives. Jess and her boyfriend, Matt, the leader of the other team, had never said anything of the kind that Sarah could recall.

“I believe that I’m close to a solution, Jess,” she said finally. “I know that there is just one piece of the puzzle I haven’t put together, yet, and that it’s in front of me. I’m just not seeing it, yet.”

She nodded, handing Sarah a cup of coffee. “Is this the first time you’ve felt this confident about it?”

“Yeah, it is. I’ve always known that we would find them, but I haven’t ever felt this close to it until now.”

“Maybe we’re the solution,” Jess mused thoughtfully.

Sarah jerked her head up in surprise and stared at Jess. “I – what?”

Jess gave her a sympathetic smile as she went around Sarah and closed the door to the break room. “Maybe Matt and I are the key to your solution in finding them – I only wish I had thought of it earlier, because it makes so much bloody sense.” She pulled out a mobile phone and dialed a number.

Sarah continued to stare at the other woman mutely for a few moments and finally found her voice again. “Jess?” There were so many complicated questions in that one word.

“I promise, you’ll understand, soon,” Jess said before she spoke into the phone. “Matt? Are you busy right now? No? Oh good. Could you please come directly to Dr. Sarah Page’s office when you get here? I think I’ve figured part of it out. I know, but this feels right and we already know that we can trust her group – look how much time they’ve spent trying to find them already.” Jess nodded. “I know, their offices aren’t wired, I made sure of that when everything else was getting set up. All right, I’ll see you soon. Love you, too.”

Jess put away her phone and looked at Sarah with a bright smile. “Let’s go to your office where we can have privacy. Matt will be joining us there shortly.”

Bemused, Sarah followed the other woman out of the break room and down the hall to her office. She sat down in her chair, curling her hands around the coffee cup. She was beginning to get the feeling that no amount of coffee was going to be enough for what Jess and Matt were going to tell her.

And what did any of them know about the pair, anyway? They knew they had been hired as part of a secondary team so that the primary team could focus on finding Connor, Abby, and Helen. Lester had told them that the two came highly recommended, but he never said who had recommended them to him. They were certainly good at their jobs – Matt with firearms and military knowledge and Jess with all of her knowledge of communications and computers. However, other than that, their team didn’t know very much about them.

Which, Sarah reasoned, was understandable since all of their attention had been focused on their friends and not so much on the everyday running of the ARC since it was obvious it was in capable hands. Once they had known that the other team was capable of handling most things that came up, their group hadn’t felt bad about turning all of their attention on a rescue mission.

When there was a knock on the door, Jess let Matt in and then locked the door behind him. The two of them sat on chairs across from Sarah and Matt gave her a faint smile.

“I bet you’re confused and wondering if you’ll need to shoot us with that gun Becker makes you keep with you at all times,” Matt said gently. When Sarah’s eyebrow lifted, he laugh softly. “Don’t look so surprised. I would expect him to do that with you all after losing your two friends. Hell, I’ve made Jess carry a weapon of some kind for years.”

Jess nodded. “With the things all of us do, it only makes sense.”

Sarah was staring at Jess in puzzlement. The calm and cool woman sitting across from her was a far cry from the cheerful and bubbly woman she was used to seeing.

“I am very confused,” she finally admitted.

Matt looked at Jess who smiled and then he looked back at Sarah. “Jess and I are from the future.”

 

The shocked silence that fell over the room after _Sid’s_ announcement lasted long enough for _Nancy_ to show signs of getting antsy. Ryan shook his head a moment and then looked at Connor to gauge the younger man’s reaction to what he was hearing.

“I _killed_ Helen?” There was a lot of shock and confusion in that comment. “I’ve never killed anyone.”

“I had a damn good reason,” _Sid’s_ voice had turned cold, surprising every one even further.

 _Nancy_ leaned into him, one hand moving up to caress his face. “It’s all right, love. It’s all right. You don’t have to explain anything to them. They weren’t there. They have no idea what you went through.”

“Or you,” he corrected, closing his eyes for a moment and leaning into her touch. “I thought you were dead and that I had lost you.”

“But you didn’t. You won’t ever lose me, Connor.”

“It was a very near thing, Abby. It was a very near thing and I thought you were gone.” He swallowed. “It’s still not better and I know you’re in more pain than usual.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m here, with you, and everything will be all right.”

Ryan frowned and looked at Cutter and then Stephen. He didn’t like was he was assuming just from their cryptic conversation. He could tell that his two friends didn’t much like it, either. From what he was deducing, Helen must have done something to Abby that caused Connor to come unglued and attack her. In the attack, Helen was killed.

Cutter moved to kneel down next to the couch so he could look at the two people there.

“Connor, you need to tell us what happened in your world. I know that I’ve taught you a great deal about not corrupting time lines or fossil records, but if we’re in danger, we need to know all of the details that you can provide.” His voice was soothing, like he would use when dealing with a wild creature.

“Why, so you guys can lock us up again?” _Nancy’s_ voice was more resigned than bitter. She was just so tired of this. Tired of not being home, tired of not knowing what was going to happen to her and Connor. She was tired of trying to be so strong day after day while her hope was diminishing. “You’re not taking him away. He had good reason to do what he did and any of you would have done the same damn thing.”

“No.” It was Abby who spoke, watching the other woman’s eyes. “I promise you, Abby, no one is going to lock either one of you up again. And no one is going to take Connor away from you. They’d have to go through me, first.”

“Through all of us,” Connor volunteered. “We’re not going to let anyone hurt you while you’re here. And we’ll figure out how to get you back home. I don’t know how, but we will.”

“You can’t help us find the right anomaly to get home,” _Sid_ said wearily as he opened his eyes to look at Cutter. “All you can do is take us to the next one that opens and let us go. We’ll go back to traveling through anomalies until we find the one that opens back into our own time.”

“And how long do you think that will take,” Stephen asked as calmly as he could manage it. “The two of you have been doing this for two years and you’re barely alive. How much longer do you think your bodies will keep up with your will?”

“I don’t know but we can’t just stay here and do nothing,” _Sid_ said. “I promised Abby that I would get her back home before…” He clenched his jaw and looked away from them.

That didn’t bode well.

“Before what, Connor?” Ryan asked, stepping closer. “What promise did you make to Abby?”

“Don’t.” _Nancy’s_ voice was pleading. “Don’t do this to him. You have no right to question him like this.”

“I’m sorry, Abby, but we do have the right,” Claudia said gently. “The two of you are from another time and we can see that you’re not in good condition. We found you, and it’s our responsibility to look after you and take care of you until you can get back to your own time.” Claudia looked into the other woman’s eyes and reached to squeeze her hand. “In this time, you’re one of my closest friends, Abby. I won’t let anyone hurt you or hurt Connor if I can do anything to prevent it.”

“You’re so much like Jenny,” _Nancy_ said after a moment. “So determined, silk wrapped around a core of steel.” She lay her head back against _Sid_.

“Talk to us, Connor,” Cutter urged. “What did you promise Abby? You have to tell us so that we can help you keep that promise.”

“You can’t help me,” _Sid_ said wearily. “Not with this.”

“How will you know unless you give us the chance?” Abby’s voice shook with emotion. She didn’t like seeing this other version of herself so resigned and hopeless and she really didn’t like seeing this other version of Connor so broken inside.

“Because I promised Abby that I would get her home before she died.” _Sid_ snapped impatiently. Then he sighed, tears filling his eyes as he looked down at _Nancy_. “Abby’s dying and I promised her that I would get her home before that happened.”

Cutter rocked back on his heels when he heard that. He stared at the two on the sofa and then swallowed, looking at his friends. Stephen had gone pale – as had Connor. Abby had both of her hands over her mouth, and Claudia’s eyes were suspiciously bright. She could see Ryan struggling to keep his calm demeanor, but Cutter didn’t think he was going to be able to. Not with this. Not at the news that the woman in front of them that looked so much like their own friend was dying.

Surprisingly, it was Lester’s cool voice that broke the silence. “What’s wrong with Abby that you think she’s dying?” He asked calmly. “Does her condition have anything to do with why you killed Helen Cutter?”

“It has everything to do with it,” _Sid_ said quietly, his arms tightening protectively around _Nancy_. “For over a year, Helen used Abby’s safety and well-being as a way to control me and get me to work with her and do what she wanted me to do. She’d hold a gun on Abby or hit her with it and I couldn’t do anything because she always threatened to kill her.”

“I got tired of it,” _Nancy_ murmured. “I was tired of being used as a way to torture him. I would have rather been dead than let her continue to scare him and use my life as a controlling factor. She had already taken so much from us – from him. If she hadn’t grabbed me, he never would have been trapped with her. One day, she wanted Connor to work on the device she had again to make it work faster. She was holding the gun on me as she started bossing him around. She jabbed me with the gun and I just… I lost it.”

“She fought with Helen, telling me to run and get away. I couldn’t leave her. I knew what she was doing was for me, but I just couldn’t leave her behind.” He swallowed. “Helen shot her. I heard the shot and I saw Abby fall. I don’t know what I was planning to do before that, but when I saw Abby fall, I went crazy for a little bit. I attacked Helen, trying to get the gun away from her. We were on the edge of a cliff and during the fight, we went over it. I managed to get the gun and I hit her in the head with it.” He swallowed. “Several times, I think. All I could see was that she had killed Abby and I couldn’t stop hitting her or screaming at her. She killed my friends and then she killed the woman I loved.”

Ryan took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. He had been right when he said that the two of them looked like they had been through hell. He couldn’t even imagine but the last few years had been like for the two of them. At least this explained a lot of what he saw in their eyes when he looked closely.

With the exception of Lester, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room, but even he looked a little less stoic than he usually did. “What happened next, Connor?”

“I don’t know how long it was before I left Helen’s body and made the climb back up to where Abby had fallen. I just knew I had to get to her and that I had to protect her from the predators. I had failed to protect her in life, but I wasn’t going to let some creature make a meal out of her.”

“Oh god, mate,” Stephen said, shaking his head as he tried to find his voice.

“But she wasn’t dead,” Lester prompted.

 _Sid’s_ gaze had looked like he was focused on something far away, but Lester’s comment brought him back to his current surroundings. He looked down to where _Nancy’s_ eyes were looking up at him.

“No,” he nodded. “She wasn’t dead, but for a few moments when I got back to her, I really thought she was. There was blood everywhere – all over her face and her hair and neck. I was able to find a very faint pulse and that’s when I knew that I had to do everything I could in order to keep that pulse going.” He took a shuddering breath and only _Nancy_ squeezing his hand kept him from falling apart again. “I got the bleeding stopped and got her cleaned up as best as I could. I couldn’t find the exit wound for the bullet, though. I looked everywhere, but I never found one. I got her cleaned up and wrapped up in the blankets we had and settled her onto the cot that Helen had in the cave. I kept a fire going and I made sure to get what fluids into her that I could. I was so scared that nothing I did was going to be enough and I was still going to lose her.”

“But you didn’t lose me,” _Nancy_ murmured. “You kept me alive.”

“Even when you stopped breathing on me, I managed to get your breathing going again and your heart beating.”

“I told you that it was just a really bad graze.”

“It was not and you very well know it.” He leaned down to kiss her forehead. “When are you going to learn that it does no good for you to try to pretend with me.”

“Connor … _Sid_ ,” Stephen said quietly, his hand holding onto his Abby. “You said that she’s dying and that after Helen shot her, you couldn’t find an exit wound from the bullet. But there was a definite entrance wound?” _Sid_ nodded. Stephen swallowed, really not sure if he wanted the answer to this next question. “Where was Abby hit?”

“In the head.”


	8. Chapter 8

Sarah took a drink of her coffee as she thought about their words. There was nothing in their demeanor or in their eyes that said they were lying to her, but then again, she hadn’t expected _Eve_ to turn into _Helen_ , either.

“I can’t say that’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen or heard,” she finally allowed. “After all, people and animals come in from the past all of the time and we know people have used these anomalies to travel into the future.” She eyed them carefully. “Where in the future do you come from?”

“A particularly unpleasant one,” Jess responded. “We’re from a future that isn’t very habitable and it’s a place that we wouldn’t wish on anyone.”

“And you came back here to what, to fix it?”

“Actually, yes,” Matt answered her. “But now, I can see we were going about it all wrong. We’ve been looking for the person who caused the future to happen and stop them. However, Jess has a pretty good theory that changes everything I thought about this.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow and looked between the two of them. “And this somehow involves helping us find Connor and Abby?”

“It does,” Matt said with a nod. “See, in our world, our scientists believe that what’s happened to the world is because of what someone did in this time to mess with anomalies and use them to poison everything in an attempt to seize power. However, that hunger for power ended up backfiring and the earth is pretty much a dead zone for anyone living on the surface of the planet.”

“Most of Earth’s survivors were forced to go underground,” Jess explained. “It’s the only place that we can survive – and sometimes that’s tenuous at best. The air on the surface is just too toxic for anyone to survive breathing it for an extended period of time. The only creatures that seem to be able to handle it are those damned predator things and the large Megopteran bug things.”

Sarah had had more than one altercation with both of those creatures and gave Jess a look of distaste before setting her cup down in front of her.

“So what was your plan? Come back here and spy on the people in the ARC and kill the person responsible for destroying your world?” Well, it was something that would occur to her.

“Something like that,” Matt admitted. “See, we work at the ARC in our future and it seemed that the best thing to do was come back here and destroy the person responsible for the destruction of our future in hopes that it would never happen.” He let out a sigh. “It was my father’s idea and it seemed like a very good plan no matter how crazy it might sound at first blush. He had worked for the ARC most of his life, so when he laid out the plan, no one thought about anything else.”

“Let me guess,” Sarah mused. “Your father would be one Danny Quinn.”

Matt stared at her in surprised and Jess covered her mouth with her hand to hide a grin. “How did you know?”

“Crazy plan. That always means that Danny Quinn is involved in it somehow.” Sarah said with a small shake of her head. “It’s how the world works.” She looked back at the two of them. “You said that was the _original_ plan, which means that for some reason, you think you need to rethink the plans the two of you have been trying to carry out for the last two years.”

“We came back here to find and take out the person who destroys the future,” Jess explained. “But I don’t think that’s why everything went to hell. I think the reason the future is like what we’ve seen is because the person or people that could have prevented it weren’t there when they needed.”

“Abby and Connor,” Sarah breathed.

Jess nodded. “Abby and Connor.”

“In our future, only Dad, you and Jenny are still with the ARC. Becker resigned from the team and was later killed in military combat. Lester was killed in an automobile accident, which is why Jenny ended up running the ARC five years ago. Well, five years ago in our time.”

Sarah couldn’t stop the swell of sorrow that she felt at Matt’s words. “Becker’s dead? And Lester, too?”

Jess nodded slightly. “The belief is that Becker couldn’t handle being here after it was decided that Abby and Connor were dead and that there was no hope in finding them alive after all of that time. Something broke in him and he had to leave. He picked up and moved away.”

“There was a memorial for the two of them next to the ones of Professor Nick Cutter and Stephen Hart. After Becker was killed, there was one put up for him, as well.” Matt let out a breath. “By the time Lester was killed, all of us had been forced underground.”

Sarah rubbed her temples with her fingers and fought down the grief over what she was hearing. That hadn’t happened yet, and it damn well wasn’t going to. “So, we have to find Connor and Abby so that they’re in place to stop the ending of the world.”

Matt nodded. “Pretty much it, yes.”

“It’s not like we weren’t under extra pressure before when we found out from Connor’s journals that Abby is dying.” Sarah sighed.

Jess and Matt stiffened across from her.

“What do you mean?” Matt demanded. “Abby can’t be dying.”

Sarah dropped her hands to the table. “We’re doing our best to prevent it,” she explained. “There was an entry in one of Connor’s journals that we found on one of our searches. It stated that Helen shot Abby and that Connor thinks the bullet is still in her head. At the time this happened, they were in the Pleistocene. We don’t know where they are now.”

“God damn it,” Matt cursed. “We have got to find them and get her taken care of. If she dies, both Connor and Becker will break and the world will end.”

“No pressure there,” Jess said quietly.

 

There was a sudden flurry of activity in the flat.

“What?” Ryan demanded, crouching next to the sofa to examine _Nancy_ \-- who tried to cringe away from him. “Why didn’t you tell us she was shot, damn it? Where does it hurt, Abby?”

 _Sid_ growled, squeezing Ryan’s hand in a surprisingly strong grip and pushing him away. “Back off.”

“Ryan,” Stephen warned, having seen the sudden darkening of _Sid’s_ eyes. It was almost like he had appeared right before he attacked the security team. “Connor, no one here is going to hurt Abby. You have to know that. All we want to do is help.” At least he understood now what the look he kept seeing in _Sid’s_ eyes. It was the smallest spark of insanity caused by everything they had gone through – and watching the woman he loved so fiercely dying before him.

“If you truly want to help us, then take us back to where you found us so we can go back through the anomaly and find our way home.”

“You can’t really just expect us to send you back through that thing when Abby is injured,” Ryan said in disbelief. “Let us get her to the A&E and taken care of before the two of you do anything rash.”

That hadn’t been Ryan’s first choice of words, but he didn’t think that calling their plans stupid wouldn’t do any of them any good. It most certainly wouldn’t get the two alternate versions of his friends to cooperate with them.

“There isn’t time!” _Nancy_ said, her eyes going slightly out of focus for a moment. “Connor’s device only works within forty-eight hours of the anomaly closing!”

Cutter looked at her closely and he wondered how he had missed the fact that she was in such obvious physical pain. The scientist had overridden the human being in him and it was a realization that he wasn’t proud of. Taking the time now, he could see the strain in her eyes and in the way she held herself. She pretended to relax against _Sid_ , but now he could see that even that was an act – probably cultivated very carefully to ease _Sid’s_ guilt and worry. Inspecting her at this close distance, he could see the unnatural grayness of her skin beneath the tan and the grime of their ordeal through time.

“How have you managed to do it?” Cutter asked her, his voice gentle. “It has got to be excruciating by now. When did it happen?”

“Managed to do what?” Claudia asked from where she was watching Cutter inspect _Nancy_.

“Function through the pain and the fact that her body is starting to shut down on her,” Cutter said before the woman in question could answer. “The slightest move has got to be a struggle for her and she’s in constant pain that is getting increasingly worse.”

The look that _Nancy_ gave Cutter for revealing her condition was decidedly unfriendly. “Two months,” she said in a carefully even voice, trying to downplay both her condition and the situation.

“Six,” _Sid_ murmured, looking at her face. “She was shot approximately six months ago if the time in my journals has been recorded correctly.”

“How long have you been in this condition, Abby?” Stephen asked as his arms tightened around his own Abby.

 _Nancy_ looked away from them.

“Love?” _Sid_ questioned.

 _Nancy_ sighed and closed her eyes. “A few weeks,” she finally responded. “Maybe more.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She opened her eyes and looked at him, her hand running through his hair. “To what end, Conn? To make your guilt over what happened even worse? To scare you or make you worry even more when you were already eating yourself up with it. Telling you my condition wasn’t going to speed up things and there was no point in adding that to your shoulders when you’re already carrying so much.”

“But I love you and I need to know these things, Abby,” _Sid_ said quietly. “It’s my job to take care of you.”

“We take care of each other, yeah?” She managed a smile for him. “It’s how we’ve survived everything this far.”

Claudia didn’t like the note she could hear creeping into _Nancy’s_ voice. She sounded like now that she was here, she was resigned to whatever fate she had been expecting. She really didn’t like the fact that this version of her friend was now giving up on her fight to live. She looked from _Nancy_ to her friend and saw that she had gone pale. She shook her head at Abby and saw the understanding dawn in her eyes.

 _This was not happening._

Claudia elbowed Ryan gently, looking to Lester before looking back at the soldier.

“Don’t even attempt it, Captain Ryan,” Lester said calmly. “That nature of the ARC is to return creatures to their own time whenever possible. The guidelines don’t differentiate between animals and humans.” He raised an eyebrow at Claudia. “Really, Ms. Brown? You’ve worked alongside me for all of these years and you didn’t think I’d realize what you would be planning as soon as you heard that this other version of your best girlfriend is dying? Really. You give me far too little credit.”

Cutter hid a smile as he turned back to the two people on the sofa. “We really should take you to an A&E and get you checked out.”

“There isn’t time,” she whispered, trying to sit up and look around at everyone. “We may have already missed the opportunity to re-open the anomaly, but if you take me to the A&E or any place but the forest, then we really will be trapped here.” She looked into his eyes. “Please, Cutter. Don’t make us fight you.”

Stephen made a choked noise, which caused Abby to glare at him. “What’s so funny?”

“Only that she sounds so much like you, love,” Stephen soothed her, pulling her close to him again. “She’s barely alive, barely able to sit up on her own and she’s still willing to try fighting her way out of this.” He kissed the top of her head. “Just like you would try to.”

 

“My son.”

“Right.”

“From the future.”

“Right.”

“From a future where my best friends and boss are dead and the world is a bad film come to life.”

“Right.”

“There is not enough beer in any pub to deal with news like this so early in the day.”

Sarah let out a sigh of relief as she leaned back in her chair. The meeting between her team and Jess and Matt had gone a lot better than she had anticipated. While Becker and Jenny were still a little pale from the shock of the news about the future, Danny was approaching this with his usual aplomb.

Aplomb which would probably crumple as soon as this was all over and he could find his way to the nearest pub. They would all probably be doing that when they got Connor and Abby safely home.

Considering everything they had already seen and dealt with since working with the people of the ARC, Sarah wasn’t surprised that the news that two of their co-workers were from the future didn’t really startle anyone. The only surprise was that there was a future where people still lived since on their trips, all they had seen were carnivorous predators.

Then again, their minds were all so focused on rescuing their friends that she didn’t think anything would derail their minds right now. Which was a very good thing to her way of looking at it.

Of course, they would later have a nice discussion about the ramifications of Matt being Danny’s son from the future and how that future might change after they rescued Connor and Abby.

“So who were you originally here to kill?” Jenny finally asked the question that no one else had, yet. The fact that Matt was there to kill someone, she could believe. It was harder for her to wrap her mind around Jess being here to kill someone. Jess didn’t seem the sort.

“We weren’t exactly sure who our target was to be honest. It was one of those things that we needed to find out after we arrived here,” Jess replied with cool efficiency. She obviously knew what Jenny was thinking. “Originally Danny thought that somehow Helen was behind it and that she had showed up even after you lost Connor and Abby.”

Becker shook his head. “We would never have given up on them, I don’t care what happened.”

“After five years, the Minister had them declared legally dead after an investigation deduced that there was no way they could have survived for all of that time in the past – or wherever they had been taken to after they were kidnapped from this time,” Jess explained. “If Helen hadn’t murdered them, then something else would have killed them because they weren’t equipped to survive for any length of time in a prehistoric environment.”

“Nobody was pleased with the decision, but when threatened with the closure of the ARC, none of you had any choice but to abide by the ruling,” Matt continued. “It just about broke all of you, but in the end, you agreed that the continued operation of the ARC was more important than fighting the Minister and the military to reverse his decision.”

“Only I didn’t stay for the continuing operations.” Becker’s voice was thick with self-loathing as he leaned his head back against the wall. “I walked away.”

“Dad said that you tried to stick it out for about a year afterward, but your heart was no longer really in it. You were scary efficient, but it just wasn’t the same you.”

Becker didn’t say anything, just closed his eyes as he tried to process the idea that he had turned his back on all of his friends and left them when they needed him.

“You loved them so much, Becker,” Jess said quietly. “Losing them broke your heart and you just didn’t have it in you to stay here when there were so many memories and so much pain for you.”

“You would have come back, though,” Matt added. “You told Dad that if he ever needed you, truly needed you, you would come back and help him. You just never got the chance to make good on that because you were killed in combat not more than a year later.”

Becker just shook his head and sighed. “That doesn’t excuse me abandoning my friends and the job I was commissioned to do.”

“No one held it against you, mate,” Matt pointed out. “Dad, Jenny, Sarah and Lester lost friends and people they cared about, yes. But you lost the two people you had been in love with. With both of them gone, it just didn’t matter to you what happened. You didn’t care if you got hurt or not. You just wanted the pain to go away and you wanted to be with them.”

“Look,” Danny said brusquely. “No offense, but none of that has happened and it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to stand by and let four people I care about die; not on my watch.”

Jess laughed, shaking her head. "He really does sound like Dad."

Everyone looked startled as they glanced from Jess to Matt.

"Dad?" Sarah asked. She had thought that Jess and Matt were dating. Had that been part of the cover story, too?

Matt shook his head. "We're married. Dad didn't like being called Mr. Quinn by his future daughter in law, so he told her to call him Dad."

"Well, with the world going all to hell, I can't help being glad that at least my son retained good taste," Danny quipped.

Jenny shook her head. "As amusing as that all is, we have a problem. Several, actually. According to Connor's journal, Abby is dying. According to Jess and Matt, the future is dying."

Becker let out a sound of frustration. "We're right back at where we started with running out of time and having no bloody idea how to rescue them and get Abby to medical care."

"That's not precisely true, Becker," Matt pointed out. "You have Jess and I now."

"And what exactly are you going to do that we haven't been able to do?"

"We're going to go and get them."

“Of course we are,” Danny said sarcastically. “Now why didn’t we think of that?” He looked at Becker. “Captain Becker, you’re the military field commander! Why didn’t you just go and get them when they disappeared? After all, it’s not like they haven’t been lost and alone in dangerous places for over two years or anything.”

Jenny winced. She could understand the frustration that was fueling Danny’s outburst. The four of them had tried over and over to get to the place where Abby and Connor had last been seen. To be disappointed and scared so many times took a toll on all of them. Every time they had a glimmer of hope about bringing their friends home, something went wrong or their calculations were off.

Or the damn anomalies just didn’t cooperate and open up to the correct time.

“There’s a difference now,” Jess said, apparently undisturbed by Danny’s outburst. “Now, you have us.”

“Oh, of course.”


	9. Chapter 9

"Abby... _Nancy_ ," Claudia said, trying to get the other woman's attention. "You keep mentioning a device that _Sid_ has. What kind of device?"

 _Nancy_ tried focusing her eyes on Claudia. “It opens anomalies.”

“I took it from Helen,” _Sid_ explained. “It will open any anomaly that has only been closed two days or less. It’s how Helen was covering her tracks as she caused trouble. She didn’t need to be confined to the timeframe of the anomalies because she could open any of the ones she tracked as long as it was within two days.”

The room was silent as they absorbed what _Sid_ was telling them.

“There’s a way to open the anomalies and not just track, map or close them?” That was the younger Connor as his mind raced over all of the possibilities of such a device.

 _Sid_ nodded. “I don’t doubt that it’s something you’ll be able to figure out and create here for your own team. The technology comes from the future, but it looks like it could be made with anything we have on hand in your time or in ours. Just until all of this happened with Helen, it never occurred to me that I should try to create something like that. We were focused on other things and I had just created my locking device when she took Abby hostage.”

“Locking device?” Cutter asked.

“Connor invented a device that locks down anomalies until they close on their own,” _Nancy_ said proudly. “He locks them and it keeps anything dangerous from coming through so there are no injuries or attacks.”

“It was one of the things that Helen wanted me for,” _Sid_ said quietly. “She wanted my devices and wanted me to invent different ones for her own use.”

“The barmy bitch wanted to control time and the way the world evolved.” _Nancy_ slumped slightly against _Sid_. “She wanted to re-shape everything to her own liking. It was one of the reasons she ended up killing Stephen and Cutter. Neither one of them would join her on her mad quest.”

“At least I didn’t lose my mind,” Stephen sighed, shaking his head.

“Well, you kind of did,” _Sid_ corrected him. “You believed her when she said that Lester was in league with people that wanted the technology of the ARC to be used to destroy the natural order of things.”

“And when she said that Lester had kidnapped her and killed the three of us.” _Nancy_ added.

“Excuse me?” Lester gave them a withering glare, but it didn’t seem to faze the two doppelgangers of his people. “She said I did what?”

“She told Stephen you had killed Cutter, Abby and I. He believed her and tried to rescue her from the ARC and get revenge on you.” _Sid’s_ voice was tired.

“He tried to make things right when he realized how easily he had been played,” _Nancy_ reminded him.

“It didn’t hurt you any less, though,” _Sid_ said, gently stroking her cheek.

“I don’t think that I would like your world very much,” the younger Abby commented softly.

 _Nancy_ looked at her counterpart from this time period. “Then don’t trust that bitch any longer or your world will end up a lot like ours.” She gave a faint smile. “And don’t ever, ever stop fighting for what you believe in and who you love.”

The younger Connor groaned. “Damn it, now she’ll never pay attention to when she’s in danger herself!”

 _Nancy_ shrugged as best as she could, but didn’t look the least little bit sorry. “We care a lot about you guys.”

“Not going to apologize for it,” Abby echoed.

“I don’t expect you to… either of you,” Connor said. “But we worry about you, too. You pay so much attention to everyone else that you’re often blind to your own danger.” He looked at _Sid_. “You have to back me up on this.”

“Abby knows exactly what I think and how I feel,” _Sid_ said with a note of something in his voice. “Of course, it took me a long while to be honest with her about my feelings and I’m not going to get involved in anything between the two of them. I know better from just being with mine.”

Connor sighed and shook his head.

“As much as this episode of love and longing is quite fascinating for all of us to watch,” Lester interrupted. “There is the small matter of how we’re supposed to help send you back to where you came from.”

“And we’re sending you back much better armed,” Ryan said firmly. “No arguments.”

Cutter nodded in agreement. “Much better armed. We’re going to give you a chance at surviving if we have to send you back through time.”

“What about preserving the fossil record?” _Nancy_ asked in a voice that Cutter was positive was getting weaker.

“Sod the bloody fossil record,” Cutter said tartly. “The safety of the two of you is a lot more important than preserving some old bones and plants.”

 

“Would someone like to explain to me why you didn’t tell us that you had one of those damn things long before now?” Danny’s voice was hard as he glared and Matt and Jess while he kept a firm hand on Becker’s arm.

Matt looked unperturbed at the anger that was radiating from both men. “We had to do everything we could to preserve the time line, you know that.” He responded. “We didn’t realize that we were here to rescue them and not kill somebody, instead.”

“We knew that you were tracking anomaly openings,” Jess explained. “But we didn’t know exactly what you were trying to do or that it was so time critical.”

Danny shook his head. “Two years. Two years we’ve been trying to find a way to get to where they are and you had the damn garage door open to do so all along.”

“Danny,” Jenny cautioned. “They were trying to save their world.”

“And we’ve been trying to save Abby and Connor,” Becker snarled at her.

“But the lives of two people don’t measure up against the lives of an entire world, no matter how we feel about it,” Sarah said carefully. “What matters now is that they’re going to help us and we’re going to get our friends back. That should be more important than anything right now.”

“Fine,” Danny nodded, but the look he gave Matt said that this conversation was far from over. “How is this thing supposed to work now?”

Jess was looking down at the device in her hand. “We go out to the original anomaly site where they disappeared and go through it. Then this will alert us to the different places anomalies have opened from there and we trace their route. It will only hone in on the sites that they’ve passed through.”

“And how exactly does it do that?” Danny demanded.

“The same way that it got Matt and I here,” Jess said as she hit a button and a glass vial popped up. She carefully took the vial and showed it to Sarah and Jenny. “We follow their DNA signature.”

Sarah took the vial, knowing that there were samples of everyone’s DNA on file. It was something that had been implemented after the whole Eve/Helen incident. “I’ll be right back.”

Jess watched Sarah leave and then looked at Danny. “Our device followed your DNA signature to get us to be able to open the correct anomalies to get back to this time.”

“So we’re going to be tracking their DNA through time?” Jenny questioned. “What if something has happened and they’ve been separated?”

Becker winced, but paid attention to Jess as she looked at Jenny.

“Then it will take us to the nearest one and we can recalculate the search coordinates from there to key in on the remaining person we’re trying to find.”

“It all sounds almost too easy,” Danny sighed, shaking his head and trying to not get his hopes up about it.

“Compared to everything you’ve already done or been through to find them, it is easy,” Matt agreed. “But all it will do is allow us to go back and forth through the anomalies to find them. It won’t protect us or them from whatever resides in that time period. For that, we’re on our own.”

“Understood,” Becker said. “I’ll make sure that we’re all geared up for anything that we might encounter out there.”

“Which begs the question, who is going on this mission,” Jenny said quietly.

“Jen, you and Sarah are too important to the team and to the ARC specifically,” Danny said firmly. “That means the two of you stay here.”

Jenny’s eyes hardened. “I have every right to go after them as you do.”

“We can’t lose you or Sarah,” Matt agreed. “But that’s all right, because Jess will be here to keep you company.”

“I’ll be doing what?” His angry wife demanded.

“You’re staying here,” Matt responded as he smoothly took the anomaly tracker out of Jess’ hands. “You’re needed to keep them safe in case anything happens and someone else shows up.”

“Helen is _dead_ ,” Jess snarled. “They’re not in danger from her any longer.”

“They’re not in danger from this time’s Helen,” Matt’s voice was calm. “What if a different version of her comes through while we’re manipulating time and the anomalies?”

Jess glared at him. “I hate you.”

“That’s not what you said in bed last night.”

“That’s before I started wondering if I could use the anomaly to emasculate you.”

Jenny had to bite her lip to not laugh at the other woman’s response. She swallowed the laughter and schooled her face before turning to Danny.

“So you, Becker, and Matt are going?” At his nod of affirmation, she shook her head. “Fine. But you’re taking at least three more men with you. Each of you will have someone watching your back at all times while you’re doing this.”

“Jen –“

“It’s not up for discussion, Danny. You’ve read Connor’s journals just as thoroughly as I have and you know that some of those creatures are ambush predators.”

“I don’t want to endanger more people than necessary, Jenny,” Becker finally said. “If it’s as dangerous as we think, I don’t want to put anyone else into a hazardous situation.”

“Your men have been trained for this,” Jenny responded firmly. “They know the risks that come with this job and they would be plenty put out if they knew that you were trying to keep them from taking part in a rescue mission that several of them have been hoping would happen for over two years.” Becker shook his head, but Jenny smiled sharply before he could say anything. “It’s take extra men or you take me, Sarah and Jess with you, instead.”

Jess laughed in delight while Matt and Becker stared at her with a mix of shock and horror.

“That’s playing dirty pool, Jenny,” Danny finally found his voice.

“I know.”

 

After Ryan and Stephen had overseen the assembling of better outfitted backpacks, the group from the ARC loaded back up in their vehicles. It didn't take them long to get to the clearing in the woods where they had first found _Sid_ and _Nancy_. By this time, _Nancy_ was fighting to keep her eyes open and keep her body moving forward. However, it was becoming more and more obvious to everyone around her that she was fading and fading fast. The stress lines in _Sid's_ face seemed to be getting deeper even as they watched.

Once they were sure they were at the correct site, _Sid_ reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a device that had what appeared to be small lights all over it and a few buttons that he pushed in a quick sequence as he pointed it into the distance.

Nothing happened.

"No, damn it, come on." _Sid_ muttered, frustration lacing his voice. "We still have a few minutes, don't do this."

Still, nothing happened.

"Maybe you should shake the thing and check the batteries," Lester said dryly.

"It's not like a remote from a television," _Nancy_ glared at him coldly. "It's just a bit difficult at times because it's been through a lot." She made her way to stand beside _Sid_. "It's all right, Connor. Just give it a few moments. It doesn't always work right away, you know that."

"What if we're too late?"

"We're not," she said softly. "We're not. Like you said, we have a few minutes. It hasn't been two days, yet."

 _Sid_ took a deep breath and started keying in a sequence of numbers again. This time, he put them in a bit slower, thinking that perhaps he had typed in something wrong by mistake.

Still nothing happened.

"How long were we unconscious for," _Sid_ demanded, looking at Cutter.

Cutter frowned. "A little more than twenty-four hours, I believe," Cutter answered quietly. "We were worried when you didn't wake up sooner, but the medic said you two looked like you needed rest."

"So we're too late, then," _Sid_ said quietly, his hand dropping to his side. "This one has already closed."

"It's all right, Connor," _Nancy_ said gently, her hand reaching to squeeze his arm. "We'll just go through the next one that opens from this time."

 _Sid_ turned his head to look her and a startled cry came from his lips as she fell against him. "Abby! Abby, answer me! Abby!"

Everything seemed to happen at once.

When _Sid's_ voice turned to panic, Ryan and Stephen were at his side immediately. Ryan was searching for a pulse when their Connor's shouted an alert.

"Uh guys, something's happening!"

Ryan immediately swung up Nancy's unconscious body in his arms and moved to place her beneath a tree that was hopefully out of harm's way. Pushing _Sid_ back behind him, he crouched next to Stephen, bringing his gun up to aim at the anomaly that appeared to be opening.

"Abby and Connor, get ready to try to tag whatever comes out of there!" Ryan shouted his orders. "Claudia, you and the Professor stay back until we've identified what's going on. Lester --"

"I'll follow my own orders, thank you," Lester said calmly as he pulled a handgun out of his pocket and stood guard over the fallen _Nancy_. His people all looked at him in surprise. "This is hardly the time for questions," he snapped. He gestured at them to pay attention to the anomaly that was opening in front of them.

When the shouting ended and the anomaly stabilized, everyone stood silent as six people stepped through the anomaly. Ryan and Stephen’s hands tightened on their guns until _Sid's_ face broke into a surprised smile.

“Becker! Danny!”

It didn’t take him long to move from where he was standing with Ryan’s men to grab Becker in a hug. He clung to him for a long moment before he turned and hugged Danny.

“Damn it, Connor,” Danny shook his head. “Never again, do you understand me? You are never to play hero like that again.”

“I didn’t know if we’d ever see you again.” Becker said quietly, looking him over. “We tried everything we could think of and it was only recently that we found your journal.” He brushed hair back from Connor’s face and studied him. “You look like hell.”

“Well, it’s been hell,” Connor admitted quietly. “No matter what anomaly opened, we just couldn’t seem to find the right one home. But I know how to open anomalies to different times so we can study them at our leisure and learn from them.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Becker’s voice was full of emotion. “Connor, what about Abby? Where’s Abby?” He wasn't able to hide the fear in his eyes.

Connor turned to the group standing beneath the trees. “Captain Ryan! It’s okay. These are our friends.” Connor looked back at Becker. “She’s hurt, Becks. She’s hurt badly. Helen shot her before and then when we got here, there was a fight and she was shot with tranquilizers and she just lost consciousness. She's never done that before.”

Ryan walked up with Abby in his arms and looked Becker up and down thoroughly. “Captain Tom Ryan,” he introduced himself. “I’m head of security here at the ARC.”

Becker nodded. “Captain Becker. I’m the head of security at _our_ ARC facility back home.”

“You should take better care of them, you know,” Ryan’s eyes were full of emotion. “They’re pretty important. I’ve been looking after our Connor and Abby for awhile. They’re special and I don’t like the thought of anything happening to them.”

“You’re not telling me anything that I don’t know,” Becker acknowledged. “If I had been sure I could take the shot without hitting Connor that bitch never would have gotten away with the two of them.”

Ryan nodded and handed Abby over to Becker, watching as the younger man held her close to his chest protectively.

“It’s pretty bad, Captain Becker,” Ryan said. “We couldn’t get her to go to the A&E, but then again, she was right in that we didn’t have enough time for anything like that if we were going to find a way to get her and Connor home. If we had insisted we wouldn't have been here when you came through.”

"We would have tracked them down," the red-headed man standing near Danny commented.

Becker looked past him to the trees where the others were standing. “Captain Ryan, there’s something you need to know… Helen Cutter…”

“Is not a worry for us, here.”

“Did Abby and Connor tell you what happened in their world?” Danny demanded as he decided to step closer to this conversation. “Helen killed people we all cared about and kidnapped the two of them.”

“That won’t happen here.” Ryan’s voice hardened a little. “It’s been taken care of. Everyone is safer here than they have been in your world.”

“How can you be so sure of that?”

“Because Lester will take care of her himself.” Ryan looked from Becker to Danny. “He had a choice between his team and his wife and he's chosen the well-being of his team.”

“His _wife_?” Danny’s eyes were full of surprise. “Lester married that bitch?”

Ryan shrugged. “There is no love lost there. I’m not even sure why they got married in the first place. But once these two came through the anomaly and we started learning what happened in their world… well, it was going to end up in a divorce, anyway. Now, it will just end up happening sooner -- as soon as we make sure that she's not the threat to us that the one in your world was to you.”

“Anything that they decide to do now would probably have happened anyway. It just got sped up by her counterpart trying to do things she had no right doing and ruining other lives in the process,” Connor said, coming back to the three men. He gave Ryan a tired look. “Look, I’m sorry to be a pain in the ass, but I don’t know how long this anomaly is going to stay open and Abby really needs a doctor. That, and it’s been over two years. I really want to go home and I know if she was conscious, she’d want to go home, too.”

Ryan nodded, squeezing Connor’s arm before leaning in to drop a kiss on Abby’s head. “You guys go and get her home because if you let her die, my men and I will hunt you down.”

A muscle in Becker’s jaw clenched as she looked at Ryan. “I don’t need to be told how to take care of my people, _Captain_.”

“Apparently you need a refresher course or else they wouldn’t be in the condition that they’re in now, _Captain_.”

“Stop it,” Connor snapped. “Both of you. Captain Ryan, what happened wasn’t Becker’s fault. It was Helen’s fault and no one else’s. Becker, we don’t have time for this. Abby is _dying_.”

Becker sighed, shame filling him as he looked down at Abby’s body in his arms. “You’re right. We need to get her home. Sarah and Jenny have been worried sick about the two of you.”

Connor nodded, then looked at Ryan. “Thank you for everything you did to help us. I know hearing some of the stuff we had to say was hard to deal with.”

“I’m just glad that we were here when you came through. I would hope that if something like that ever happened to our Abby and Connor, someone would be there to help them, too.”

Danny nodded. “We’d help them no matter what. We’ll take our two and go home and let you get back to looking after your own people.”

Ryan stepped back and watched the men turn to walk through the anomaly. He could see that they were just going to make it because it was pulsing as it got ready to close down.

“Good luck,” he said quietly as he watched them step through the anomaly. He sincerely hoped that everything would be all right for those two, now. He certainly hadn't liked the glimpse of what his friends could become when lives went to hell around them.

Becker let out a sigh of relief as he held Abby close to his chest and walked beside Connor. For over two years he had been scared to death about what was happening to the people he loved more than anything. For two years he had been worried that he would never see them again.

But that had changed. They had kept fighting and kept searching and now they were back where they belonged. He wasn’t going to let anything harm them ever again.

“I’m never going to let you two go,” Becker promised Abby softly as he stepped through the anomaly. They were home and everything was going to be all right now.

He didn’t even look back as he heard it close down behind them.


End file.
